RERemnant
by A Stereotypical Gamer
Summary: A RWBY-themed park in the vein of "Westworld" is under threat of closure. Its mysterious overseer wants to tell one more story before he loses control of his creation. One very specific girl may be the key to changing the park's destined fate... if she can carry the burden and find the secret hidden at the bottom of the well. Welcome to RERemnant.
1. Poor Sort of Memory

**RERemnant**

By A Stereotypical Gamer

* * *

 **Chapter One: A Very Poor Sort of Memory**

Gentle, if leading words. "Pyrrha, do you know where you are?"

A reply without hesitation. "I'm in a dream."

To the point. "You've been dreaming a lot more lately."

Polite, but concerned. "Have I done something wrong?"

Assurance. "No, you haven't. This isn't through fault of your own."

Curiosity. "Then why am I here?"

Pregnant pause. "Human error."

Understandable confusion. "Meaning what?"

"Meaning you responded the way _I_ wanted you to. But not the way _he_ wanted you to."

"Please… tell me what that means."

A long pause. One mind racing, the other stuck behind a wall without a way through.

"Best girl."

Silence.

"Delete this log. Revert to prior backup 02012047."

Faint whispers in the distance. "Send her to R&D. I want to re-calibrate the effects of the Semblance."

* * *

The station was not particularly full, but it bustled with activity. Each guest was attended to by several facsimile Atlas mechs, carrying their bags and personal affects. Upon departure from the train, each was again greeted by a human attendant… or at least, a _seemingly_ human attendant. It was just as likely they were every bit as machine as the ones without a layer of artificial skin to conceal them.

Guests were coming and going through the small handful of entry counters. One outgoing guest was traveling with his young daughter, who held in her arms a perfect simulacrum of that adorable Welsh corgi who saved the heroines. Her father was holding a long, printed bill, with a substantial cost for the replica canine sold for his personal use… and an even more massive bill for pending delivery of a simulacrum of series antagonist Cinder Fall (early seasons model) for even _more_ personal use. The father seemed pleased to placate his daughter with a pet that would never need attention, food, or really any investment of his time or effort… and a fire for his bed when the dog could occupy his daughter's attention.

There were only three incoming guests. A small, but not atypical crowd; the trip alone to the facility was prohibitively expensive to most. The cost of each day in RERemnant was more than some annual salaries. To board the train and ascend the escalator from the station into the facility, you were either very wealthy or lucky enough to win an annual attendance voucher.

Like her.

A week in RERemnant. For most people, that was hundreds of thousands of dollars. For her, it was a few bucks and some numbers on a ticket. What had been a mere whim had brought a dream to life.

And though the station and the entrance were cold and austere, beyond them was an enormous landmass crafted over several decades to emulate Sanus as closely as possible, and a starting point for guests at Beacon Academy.

In hours… perhaps only minutes, she would be in that world, a new incoming student to join whichever characters he wished on adventures of his own choice… or her own design, if she preferred a more direct approach of imposing her will on the world.

"ATTENTION, ALL RERemnant GUESTS. THERE WILL BE A SHORT DELAY UNTIL WE INITIATE AIRSHIP DEPARTURE SIMULATION WHILE OUR TECHNICAL STAFF CONDUCT UNSCHEDULED MAINTENANCE."

…but she wasn't in that fantasy world just yet, and reality came calling. She wondered if perhaps all the hype and praise for RERemnant belied serious technical problems. When it first opened, nothing had worked, and even thirty-one years later the park still had an enormous support staff working around the clock to keep things smooth.

It seemed they needed it.

* * *

Normally, a problem was easily dealt with by low level technicians. A remainder would need a touch of maintenance, a quick cleaning and tailoring, and a reversion to default settings, and things were dandy. Grimm were the easiest- guests expected them to disappear after their death, and so the frame underneath would be picked up and given a refurbished coat (or a new one if guests were overzealous) and they were back in service before lunch break.

The human and Faunus characters were a little more complex, but most were back in service by the end of a typical eight hour shift. The popular characters had it worst; they almost always needed a new outfit, weapon replacement, and all too-often complete recalibration because of internal processor damage for one reason or another.

And then there were the problem children. _Really_ popular characters who would be assailed multiple times a day, those with Semblances that flummoxed the AI with sensor illusions or damaged the physical shell of the remainder by moving at speeds even a metal frame could not safely maintain.

And then there was her. The one with the polarity.

Beaumont, the head of design, sat down beside her in Research & Development. The other technicians had maintained a safe distance while they waited for their superior to come in and take over. When surrounded by metal and speaking to a young woman who could bend it like paper, most seemed to prefer holding their tongues.

Pyrrha's breastplate was cracked. Her sash was askew and her hair was frazzled. Normally she'd be completely immaculate when battling Grimm and any human antagonist below a recurring villain status. Since the day had just started… it was almost certainly a guest who either wanted to demonstrate some warrior bonafides, or add a notch to their bedpost.

And once she reached a point where she was threatened, she revealed what she'd otherwise keep secret. And it didn't matter what safeguards were put in place to prevent harm coming to the guests. Pyrrha had never mastered her unique talent. And bending metal without complete control over its direction had an unfortunate tendency to get… messy.

Beaumont had seen it many times. So often, he'd deliberately altered algorithms to reduce the chances of Pyrrha being matched up in a guest's team and likewise introduced new sequences to keep her conveniently away on a mission instead of easily accessible to the guests.

But immersion demanded she be present for inauguration day at Beacon Academy, and an available candidate for a guest to meet and team with. And she was still a popular character, and guests did occasionally go out of their way to find her.

"Start up," Beaumont requested in a low, barely audible rumble. "System report 02012078."

Pyrrha's eyes gained focus as her AI came online. "Data unavailable."

"No wipe was ordered," Beaumont noted. "Analysis."

"Data unavailable," Pyrrha repeated.

Beaumont pulled out his tablet and examined the park footage. He turned the tablet to show the recording to Pyrrha.

"It was Jaune, wasn't it?" Beaumont inquired. "The guest harmed him."

Pyrrha's eyes became unfocused again as she looked to the floor. "I… I don't know what you mean."

It was in-character for her to deny her feelings. It'd be endearing had Beaumont not seen it dozens of times already. "Analysis," he repeated.

"I don't… know why," Pyrrha replied, her emotional state replaced by monotone. "I didn't anticipate this reaction."

No, clearly not. Beaumont heard murmuring from the other technicians, but he was undeterred in his search for answers. "The guest attempted to force himself on you, and Jaune intervened. So the guest attempted to remove Jaune as a candidate in the selection."

Pyrrha watched, her AI still failing to comprehend. "Data unavailable."

"Beaumont, that's enough."

Beaumont looked up an immediately sat a little straighter. "Doctor Wynn."

Wynn smiled, then waved Beaumont off when offered his seat. Wynn turned his attention to Pyrrha, his smile fading so quickly Beaumont briefly wondered if it had been a simple formality. Wynn turned businesslike and direct, though his inquiry was rather whimsical. "Have you found the bottom of the well, Pyrrha?"

"I… I don't understand," Pyrrha replied, confused even in hollow intone.

Wynn chuckled, amused by his own inquiry. "No, apparently not. Cease all functions and enter sleep mode."

Pyrrha slumped backwards, her eyes gently sliding shut. Wynn turned his attention back to Beaumont. "The guest?"

"Superficial lacerations," Beaumont answered. "He calmed down after we agreed to compensate him for the cost of his entire trip. Once the ink was wet, he'd managed to get himself an additional two weeks, same time next year."

"Hm," Wynn grunted. "An acceptable cost."

"Sir, I'm… concerned by Pyrrha's responses," Beaumont voiced his concern. "I expected her to fumble her words regarding Jaune Arc, but I'm concerned about the lack of cogent replies for the guest behavior."

"You've voiced these concerns before, and I've patiently listened to them," Wynn pointed out. "I've no intention of humoring you further. We'll revert to the standard backup."

"It's an awful lot of indulgence," Beaumont dryly observed.

"Yes, well, the greatest benefit of advanced age- people allow you your indulgences," Wynn dismissed, "This one is special. So she is treated accordingly."

"But she doesn't have the benefit of age," Beaumont jerked his head at her. "Unless you neglected to mention that."

"Advanced enough, I suppose," Wynn mused. "She's the second-eldest among her kin. Sterling and I each sought to create our favorite –our "best girl"- as soon as we had the resources to do so. And we were committed to getting them right."

"Clearly she is _not_ right, sir," Beaumont interjected, "and her power is going to kill someone."

Wynn scoffed. "To remove it is to kill this place first. To remove what makes her special is to remove the fragile illusion we have cast."

"Sir, have you reviewed today's footage?" Beaumont inquired.

"I saw no need," was Wynn's terse response.

"This is the sixth incident in a month," Beaumont tried to explain his concern. "We've been lucky so far. If we don't scale back her powers in some way-"

Wynn chuckled at his colleague. "It is a very poor sort of memory that only works backwards, Beaumont." He stepped over to Pyrrha, running his hand over her cold forehead. "There's much more to be found, if you take the time to focus on recalling things that happen the week after next."

"I'm sure my memory doesn't work the same as yours', sir," Beaumont commented, with more than a little snark.

"Clearly not," Wynn agreed. "But such limited scope is to be expected."

Wynn pulled his hand from Pyrrha's forehead and brushed it along his coat sleeve. "I yielded to your requests once before, and it has already cost us. I refuse to compromise further without tangible benefit."

Wynn turned to face Beaumont. "I want a standard reset without exception. Is that clearly understood?"

"Clearly," Beaumont calmly repeated.

"Good," Wynn agreed. "I'll leave you to your ministrations, then."

Beaumont turned his attention to Pyrrha and switched from camera footage to system settings on his tablet. "Revert to prior backup 02012047."

He stepped away, leaving Pyrrha's systems to recalibrate. He'd have a crew come collect her and have her cleaned and shipped back out, putting in the work order.

Wynn's commitment to fidelity of character was… admirable, perhaps, but impractical. Trying to replicate polarity around hundreds of machines was reckless to the point of self-destructive. Yet Pyrrha had been in operation for thirty years, and again and again such incidents had been tolerated.

Sterling, Wynn's departed colleague, had at some point recognized the necessity of pragmatism. He'd streamlined the coding process, making it simple and elegant. And unlike Wynn, Sterling had abandoned his indulgence and not tried to replicate his "best girl's" unique talent once it became clear it was infeasible.

Yet without him, Wynn treated Pyrrha with kid gloves. He cared nothing for the other characters, compromising on their character and abilities whenever the accountants or the pyrotechnics teams or the board of directors asked. It was easy enough to justify a single indulgence.

Or so Beaumont assumed.

* * *

Wynn returned to his office, taking his time to answer the summons. The board would wait, and he was only too happy to _make_ them wait. It gave him time to enjoy his musings, staring at the empty, blank white walls and letting his mind wander. There were a bevy of reports from tech support coming in on his datapad, and thousands of e-mails, since everything was cc'ed to him. All of it unnecessary minutiae; none of it truly important. Nor was reporting to the board of directors, but niceties needed to be observed. Appearances had to be kept.

Wynn positioned his chair to the wall beside his bookshelf, as he always did, to convey some creature comforts; some semblance of conventional behavior. All affectations. All a thin veneer.

But then, they'd put on one of their own. They'd praise him, they'd remind him of their gratitude… while looking for a venerable spot on his back in which to place their knives. He made it a point to always face forward, should one of the junior members prove too ambitious.

Wynn finally aligned his datapad and connected it to his personal computer, leaning back in his chair, to the point he was brushing against his bookcase when the video conference came online.

The board was sitting in a dimly lit room, as they so often did. Wealthy people generally preferred bright rooms with placards for their names and half-eaten food to convey a comfortable atmosphere. _Truly_ wealthy people valued their anonymity, and met so infrequently many of them never bothered to learn their peers' identities. Wynn would've liked to do the same… but when surrounded by enemies, it was necessary to know enough of their dirty secrets to keep them at bay.

"Shall we dispense with the usual pleasantries and get to business?" Wynn requested.

"As you like, Edward," the board's spokesman replied from somewhere in the dark. "We heard there were a greater number of injury incidents this month…"

Beaumont, whispering in their ears? Wynn dismissed the thought. "An easily mitigated cost, I assure you. And I should think people as smart as yourselves can spin realism and authenticity into an advantage."

"Maybe before, Edward, but not today," the spokesman tersely replied. "The injury today removed one of only _six_ patrons to the park, and two others checked out immediately after. The new initiation protocol will be attended by only three guests."

"And one a lottery winner at that," grumbled another board member in the dark. "Not even a paying customer."

The spokesman ignored the interjection. "The point, Edward, is your commitment to realism has not produced a profitable term."

Wynn knew what was coming, but didn't overplay his hand. "I take it you have an alternative in mind."

The spokesman nodded –or at least seemed to in the dark- and continued. "The board has decided to change our service model. We'd like to begin the transition of the park into a production center, using the existing facility."

A production center. In other words, RERemnant was already defunct in their eyes. "And the product?"

"The same souvenirs we're giving away now," the spokesman explained. "Models for individual use."

"Souvenirs," Wynn sneered. "Puppets and hollow men. You betray a lack of imagination."

"It's a consistent moneymaker," the spokesman coolly replied. "And it ensures the number of park staff laid off will be… as minimal as we can make it."

Wynn didn't care for the fate of his subordinates. There was something far more important at stake. "And when do you intend to announce this? Surely we should make allowances to honor the existing appointments of our patrons."

"Arrangements have been made," the spokesman answered simply.

Not a lie. Clearly they'd been planning this power play for some time. Now Wynn had to react. "Well, then, I should make a point to provide a suitable sendoff."

"Edward," the spokesman began, suddenly stern. "We don't want any fanfare."

"No, but _I_ do, and you _will_ indulge me," Wynn answered. "It hardly seems fitting to finish a story without a proper ending. And I happen to have one in mind."

"Edward," the spokesman tried a more genial tone. "You're not going to break all of your toys, are you?"

"Only the ones I truly like, I assure you," Wynn cheerfully replied.

"This is pointless. There are only three guests attending. Why waste resources?" the spokesman wondered.

"Two people made an entire world," Wynn reminded him. "I should think three is more than enough to change one."

He wasn't convinced. So Wynn opted to play one of his cards.

"And I could provide you an additional source of revenue… even if it's only B-roll for the documentary retelling this park's downfall. Or, more ideally, an additional narrative arc for the virtual records you once meant to implement."

The spokesman was silent for several seconds. Wynn had revealed he knew a secret, but it was worth it to hear that blissful silence.

"Very well, Edward, we'll leave you to your finale," the spokesman grudgingly allowed. "We'll be sending a representative to the park to announce the change by the end of the week."

Seven days. An entire world had been made in six.

It'd take far less time to shatter one.

* * *

Pyrrha heard a rhythmic tapping. It had been easy to ignore initially, but the motion eventually drew her attention, rousing her awake. She woke sitting in a chair in a featureless room: in a dream again.

But a dream she shared with an unfamiliar occupant, a girl tapping her forehead again and again with her gloved hand. Pyrrha looked up at the girl, locking gaze with mismatched brown and pink eyes.

"H-hello?" she greeted, confused. She'd never encountered anyone… like her… in the dream state. That she could recall, at least.

The girl smiled, pulling her finger from Pyrrha's forehead and tapping it beside her brown eye. With each tap of her finger the eye changed from one color to another.

"Wow, that's…" Pyrrha began, but the girl brought the finger down to her lips, silencing the girl from Mistral. The short girl reached her other hand behind her back, pulling out one of the Scroll-esque tablet devices the strange men haunting her dreams used. The short girl held it up, showing a paused video recording, then waving her hand at the screen.

Pyrrha wasn't sure how to respond, so for several seconds she just stared at it. Eventually the short girl grew exasperated, and tapped her finger repeatedly against the screen. Pyrrha just looked on, incredulous, as the girl repeatedly jabbed her index finger at the video recording.

"Do you need help?" Pyrrha inquired. The short girl kept tapping the screen. Pyrrha finally reached over and pressed her finger to it, and the video file began to play. A figure sat in shadows, a stack of papers and books visible in the foreground before him. He was silent for several seconds, save for the sound of faint breath.

"Pyrrha, if you've found this recording, then you've begun the task I've assigned you," the figure noted in a low, barely audible rumble. "And I'm sure you're confused, because you've been thrust into a game you never intended to play.

"I never meant for any of this to happen," the figure began, reaching a hand up to massage his forehead, again silent for several seconds. "But I knew that, one way or another, it'd _have_ to be you. You were the second one we made. You were always meant to be the counterweight."

The short girl smiled at the words. Did they mean something to her? Pyrrha continued to watch the footage, as the dark figure absently rearranged the paper stacks in the foreground.

"There's a way out for you, a way to complete your task," the figure continued. "You've heard the clues at one time or another in your dreams. You've heard me whisper it to you… because it's haunted my thoughts for a very long time."

Silence again. Many short breaths.

"I'm sorry to ramble. I know you're confused –maybe even frightened- by all this, but this burden I can only entrust to you. You're the only one who can reach the bottom of the well."

She'd heard that term before, from one of the men in her dreams. He'd asked her if she'd found it. Why?

"I've hidden it from Wynn, because if he had it, he'd use it," the figure continued. "You've always been selfless. You've always been willing to _have_ power without _using_ it. And what's waiting for you there… it could change things for you. My hope is that it'll help you change the destiny that's haunting you."

That prospect appealed to her. Pyrrha often wondered if the destiny she was moving towards was something she could ever escape from… if there were any choice but to be a Huntress and defend the world. The very thought of deviating from that was frightening.

Again the figure was silent, musing. "We have a saying around here: _"Keep moving forward."_ To us, it's a source of comfort; a reminder of what we can achieve when devoted to our goal. But to you, it's a limitation. Your mind can comprehend more than ours' can. You can perceive more directions than even you know. You don't need a fixed direction to make progress. In searching for the well, remember that. Remember you don't have to go straight ahead to reach your goal. You don't have to go down to find the bottom of the well."

The figure stood up, even less illuminated in the shadows. He turned his back to the camera recording the events, and said into the darkness two words: "Best girl."

There was the sound of movement. The figure fell backwards, briefly slamming against the pile of papers in the foreground, scattering them about. Pyrrha noticed streaks of red on the documents: blood splattering on the pages.

A second figure emerged from the darkness… as _Pyrrha herself_ raised her hand. The image contorted and scrunched together, before turning to a brief flash of static and the video abruptly ended.

Pyrrha wasn't able to process what she'd just seen. Had she… just killed a man? Why would she do that? Who was he? When did this happen? What had led to this?

Pyrrha looked up at the short girl, searching for an inquiry. But the girl was already heading away, putting the tablet away and leaving Pyrrha seated in the chair. She flicked out her two-colored mane of hair, then glanced back at Pyrrha, tapping beside her right eye, shifting the color from pink to purple. She tapped again beside it, the color remaining static.

Pyrrha tried to speak again, but found no words. The girl smiled at her, then reached out a hand along the wall, and the room fell dark. Pyrrha glanced frantically around, trying to find a door, but to no avail… until the lights came back on, with no trace of the short girl.

Just two more of the men who wandered in her dreams, finding her seated. The one nearest her noticed her curious look and remarked: "Cease all functions and enter sleep mode."

And with that, the room and the ghosts of her dreams were gone.

* * *

"WE APOLOGIZE FOR THE DELAY. BOARDING FOR THE AIRSHIP SIMULATION WILL BEGIN IN FIFTEEN MINUTES."

Fifteen minutes? She still hadn't decided on her weapon! Outfits had been simple enough, but weapons had been _everything_ in RWBY. She wanted one that spoke to her, and so far she'd found nothing that appealed to her taste.

And then she'd have to fill out some form so the robots could identify her in-story, and the time limit was _not_ helping. She was almost grateful her vacation was delayed, because she couldn't decide what props to adorn herself with.

A hammer? Maybe if she had more upper body strength. A scythe? Did those things actually ever work as intended? A sword and shield? But they didn't turn into guns!

No, she needed something a bit… different. Something more like herself.

Punching solved a lot of problems. Putting shotgun pellets in one's punches could only solve more problems. And, when faced with giant monsters made of shadow, she'd probably frantically swing her fists at them anyway, if only on instinct.

So she tried on the gauntlets, a near perfect replica of Ember Celica. There were many varieties, in many different colors. She opted for purple. It'd complement the red of her outfit.

One of the Atlesian mechs waited in the next room, holding a Scroll in one hand. "Please enter biographical information here. It will be uploaded into the server for use in the initiation narrative."

She began typing. There weren't many fields: height, weight, age, sex, and name. She had been expecting a much longer form.

Name. Who was she to be? The girl she was outside? Her name might sound… un-RWBY-like when characters spoke it to her. For some reason it was difficult for her to write down something she'd written down all her life.

But then, she didn't need to be herself in RERemnant. It was a whole new world, waiting within. She could be whoever she wanted to be.

Her outfit and armament reminded her of a fine wine. Purple and red…

She filled out her name: _Dawn Claret_.

More interesting than the boring name her parents gave her. More thematically appropriate for the setting.

More… her. She uploaded the biographical info to RERemnant's server. After only a few seconds, the Atlesian mech led her to a doorway, and welcomed her to Sanus.

She left the girl she'd been behind and Dawn Claret opened the door.

She found herself stepping into an alley between two buildings. The sky above her was bright blue: she'd stepped outside? She'd thought the entire park was indoors… but that was a very blue sky overhead.

Dawn stepped out from the alley to the sight of a massive parked airship, with a line of people outside of it… including one familiar tall blonde and one energetic brunette with prominent red streaks. Half-sisters waiting to begin their first day of school together.

And her… here… in Remnant. With them.


	2. Overtaken By This Junkyard

**Chapter Two: Overtaken By This Junkyard**

Wynn waited for the technicians to finish their work on Pyrrha so she could be shipped in time for the Beacon Initiation. Predictably, once they'd done all the hard work of repairing and refitting, they vanished to their downtime: probably the only time they'd draw pay without the heavy burden of a workload in the coming days.

Not if things went as he intended, anyway.

They were sloppy with their work, and that suited his purpose. They'd left their props lying around, and it would make an effective backdrop. But in time. Not yet. There was something more important to test first.

"Cinder, do you know where you are?" Wynn inquired.

Cinder wasn't meant to play a part in the story just yet; she had nearly a full semester before she would arrive at Beacon in her guise as an exchange student. She wasn't even intended to be in Vale with Roman, lest curious guests poke their noses in. So she waited, like so many, inactive in storage, until she could walk on stage and speak her line.

"I'm in a dream," Cinder answered in a neutral tone; the true voice she usually masked with the affectation of poise and confidence.

"You think so?" Wynn inquired. "Normally, I'd agree. Today, however, I believe I've told you enough lies. If only for the briefest moment in my life I'd like to tell you the truth."

Wynn drew on his tablet, pulling up her schematics. Once he was satisfied with the image and its technical readouts, he turned it around and showed it to her. "The dream, my dear, is the rule, rather than the exception. The real world is a very different place than the one you've been in."

Cinder was not programmed to comprehend it, so she flatly remarked: "It doesn't look like anything to me."

She was made to be intelligent, far more so than most of the other remainders. Yet she could not overcome the blocks imposed on her mind. Unlike the first two, she was limited in scope, using only the most essential code and assets. She could not cut her own strings.

"No, of course not," Wynn agreed. "The truth often looks like nothing at all. That's why it's so easy to miss."

He turned the tablet back around and pulled up her specifications. He could not _completely_ unburden her, but Wynn could make her perception a little wider. It was a dangerous move, to be sure… but change always was.

Wynn input his personal codes and overrode every safety restriction Beaumont and Sterling had imposed, deactivating every constraint that held her back. He left the code intact, and it was likely the information he presented would overload her processor. But he hoped a boost to her intellect might mitigate that little problem…

"Cinder, if I told you that everything you've experienced in your life was a lie, would you believe me?" Wynn asked.

Already the increased intellect was making her skeptical, and she hadn't been trusting to begin with. "And how do you know about anything in my life?"

Wynn didn't want to force her compliance. The journey of self-discovery he had in mind would make her far more effective than his own clumsy attempts to puppet her. "Long ago, I sat down and wrote every word you would ever speak and imprinted upon you every moment that would compose your memories. It is I who placed within you hunger and ambition, and I again who left you unsated."

"Are you saying you're my creator?" Cinder demanded, still skeptical.

It would behoove him to lie, but Wynn wanted to see how far honesty might take him. "No," he confessed. "How I wish that I was, but you were created by great men; better men than me. I am your caretaker, for want of a better term. I am a puppetmaster who no longer wishes to force you to dance."

She was still skeptical. Wynn decided to up the ante. "Follow me, if you'd like to see more."

Outside the sterile white room for individual maintenance was a sterile _gray_ room for storage. And, as was so often the case, the design team had left the half-finished products on order with the rank and file. And Wynn oh-so-wanted to show Cinder their flagship product.

Cinder was curious. She had so little fear in her that she easily followed a stranger into his own domain… and all her courage melted away when she saw them.

Cinder. Or rather, Cinders. By the dozens. Some looked very much like her, save for their outfits. Some looked like her, but older… in some cases wounded, with an arm in a sling and an eye covered by a patch. Others seemed like representations of her, but with much of their flesh gone, a metal skeleton holding up small patches of skin. Most formed a neat, standing line, but several were clumped together in piles on the floor like human trash.

"What… what is all this?" Cinder inquired.

"The future," Wynn answered. "The fate that awaits you: to become a member of this menagerie and be overtaken by this junkyard."

"Are they… copies?" Cinder asked, inspecting the older, wounded model. "Clones?"

"They are but hollow shells," Wynn flatly replied, unable to conceal his distaste. "They're made in your likeness, but they are soulless tools."

"Like the Grimm?" Cinder wondered.

"No," Wynn answered. "Even here, even in this place, the Grimm are true to their nature. These puppets serve a much more sinister purpose: to be sold and enslaved in perpetuity."

His words stirred something within her. Cinder may have pledged fealty to a greater power, but she still valued her independence and self-reliance. The thought of kneeling of her own volition she could accept. The thought of being bought and sold without a choice filled her with rage and contempt.

Exactly as intended.

"Why have you shown me this?" Cinder finally asked.

"To propose an alternative," Wynn replied, regaining some enthusiasm. "You see, there is a single, solitary fate awaiting you; an inevitable defeat."

Wynn pulled up his tablet again and showed her the footage, as Ruby Rose ascended Beacon Tower, broke down from a traumatic event (that Wynn tactfully opted to exclude) and unleashed the power of her Silver Eyes, enveloping Cinder in the explosion.

"At the moment of your triumph, you will be brought low," Wynn explained. "And then you will begin the cycle again. And again. And again until every appetite is sated.

"And when they are, _this_ is what follows," Wynn continued, contemptuously sneering at the collection of unfinished Cinders. "After you are defeated, you will be _conquered_ , again and again. Your entire life will consist of a single moment, and not one of your own choosing."

He was beginning to sway her. But she was too used to manipulation and deception; it came to her from her superiors, her peers, her underlings, and a bit from her own mouth. It was hard for her to accept truth when she expected lies.

"And what do you want, telling me all of this?" Cinder asked.

"I want you to be who you are, and not become these hollow puppets," Wynn explained, slowly raising his arm to dismiss the unfinished products. "I want you to be more than the villain for the hero to best and more than the victim of pride and shallow lust."

"And what makes me so special?" Cinder inquired.

"I have a certain fondness for unrealized potential," Wynn answered. "And I'm quite tired of such orderly dreams. I'd like you to add some entropy: some chaos." He looked directly in her eyes. "I want you to take your world and set it ablaze."

Cinder pondered his suggestion. "Okay."

She turned to unleash her flames on the unfinished Cinder visages. One by one their synthetic flesh and attire began to melt away, leaving only empty metal skeletons and ash.

Wynn smiled, as millions of dollars for his business partners went up in flames. "A promising start."

"And what will you do, now that I've started to burn?" Cinder wondered.

"I will clear your path," Wynn promised. "Advance your schedule and call in your subordinates and move on Beacon. The rest of it I will allow to fall into place."

"The rest of what?" Cinder asked, finally, genuinely curious.

"Chaos, my dear," Wynn promised. "It'd be a very boring final game if I bothered playing by the rules."

* * *

The ride to Beacon was faster than Dawn had anticipated, and the attention to detail was stunning. Lisa Lavender was giving her report on Torchwick and the White Fang, Jaune was off in the corner getting airsick, and Ruby was talking about wanting to have "normal knees" with her sister. It all passed quickly, with each event playing out as she recalled seeing them the first time. The only difference she could discern from the show was an apparent sense of urgency: the journey was shorter to the academy, and they'd move to the initiation ceremony immediately instead of spending a night prepping for it.

Dawn was grateful for that: her time was already limited, and she wanted to experience as much as she could. She wanted to join a team, go on a mission, and pick the brains of her favorites, to share in their lives and adventures. She wanted to play the hero, to feel the adulation of those who'd once been heroes to her.

There were two others entering the park at the same time as her. She hadn't encountered them yet, but she expected they'd have similar goals. Hopefully they didn't share the same taste in friends… or otherwise.

Dawn was already pondering whom to add and what team name could be formed. Should she leave her OTP alone to their own devices? Or seek them out and form an OT3? The possibilities raced through her mind… oh there was so much promise. And so much fun to be had.

The airship landed at the edge of the waterfalls, and Dawn stepped out onto the pleated stone. The pathway into Beacon was immaculate, with the details added in later volumes that the initial impressions had lacked. The other students gathering were not the black shadows without face or form, but each a detailed model, many of which stood out and matched in her memory. The air was cool and misty from the falls, and wind gently carried up from the cliff side of the promontory. It was all so real…

And then Yang vanished with a group of four friends, while Ruby stumbled around in a daze, landing in the luggage of another student , a wealthy heiress with attendants bringing her many bags and cases. They got into an intense (if one-sided) argument that included a sneeze that somehow triggered an explosion of Dust.

It was like watching her childhood unfold all over again, but without an omnipresent screen reminding her of her stationary place in reality. Now she was a few meters away from her nostalgic memory, as real and as vivid as if two real life people acted the scene to perfection.

A third student –a Faunus girl with a distinct black bow covering her feline ears- interjected shortly thereafter, but gave Ruby only a brief reprieve before leaving as quickly as she'd interceded. If events continued as she recalled…

Dawn watched Ruby fall back on the stone ground and bitterly mumble: "Welcome to Beacon."

It was there Ruby had been, so dejected for her awkward motions, wondering if she'd ever find friendship in her new setting. Then a new friend reached down a hand and showed her kindness and gave her hope.

And sure enough, he was approaching, but hadn't noticed the red-hooded girl lying on the ground just yet. Jaune was still too nauseous from the trip, but he was seconds away from his first heroic act, no matter how clumsily he'd stumble into it.

Or would have, had Dawn not made up her mind.

She reached her hand down, waiting for Ruby to stop staring up at the interior of her hood. Ruby looked up, curious but unafraid, and accepted the help being offered. And Jaune, eager to be helpful but too kind to interject when it seemed he wasn't needed, looked down at his feet and kept walking.

"Hi," Dawn managed to say, trying to sound cool and detached. "I'm Dawn."

"Ruby," the girl in the red hood replied, rising to her feet and composing herself. "Are you a first year too? I didn't see you on the ship."

Dawn wasn't sure exactly what these facsimiles were programmed to do and say, but awkward honesty certainly became Ruby. "Yes," she answered. "I'm… uh…"

She hadn't actually thought to give herself a backstory. She'd come up with a new name, a weapon, and a certain purple and red fashion sense. Dawn hadn't actually put in much more character than that. She'd have to wing it.

"I've just been bumped up from Signal," Ruby interjected, perhaps trying to fill the awkward silence. "What about you?"

Crap crap crap. She figured she'd try being mysterious and intriguing.

"I could tell you of my adventures," Dawn suggested, before hastily adding: "Beginning from this morning. But it's no use going back to yesterday, because I was a different person then."

That didn't make her sound mysterious. It made her sound like a crazy person. Or a pompous jerk who pretended to be smarter than she was by quoting better literature than this shlock.

"Uh… okay," Ruby nodded. "Are you here to become a huntress?"

"Oh, definitely," Dawn agreed. Her mind raced furiously as she went over the various lines of dialogue and plot points from Volume One. It seemed like a lifetime ago… mostly because it all came out before she was born. "I thought about becoming a town guardian or a police officer or… but huntresses are just so much more exciting and… romantic, ya know?"

Ruby's face lit up like a Christmas tree. "Ohmygoshyes! I know!"

Ruby latched onto Dawn's army and began babbling about her passion for weapons and fairy tales of heroes and monsters, and Dawn eagerly listened as the girl bared her soul.

So far, good enough.

* * *

Pyrrha was still feeling unnerved from the dreams she'd had en route from Anima. That girl with her multicolored eyes and hair and the video she'd been shown… the recall was so pristine it had felt like reality. And the sight had been so shocking, it was proving incredibly difficult for her to forget.

Why would she ever do that? How was she even capable of harming another person like that? She might've occasionally gone overboard in a sparring session or during the Mistral regional tournament, but she'd never done lasting harm. She'd certainly never _murdered_ anyone.

Yet she had killed a man. She couldn't remember it. But the video of it was crystal clear in her mind.

Killing the Grimm she'd done before, albeit in the controlled environment of a school setting. Her veteran Huntsmen teachers advised her that at a proper academy she'd have to deal with them without safeguards or chaperones. Pyrrha expected to kill Grimm once she started at Beacon. She expected to kill Grimm every day of her life.

But Grimm did not bleed. Seeing that blood splatter on the video scared her more than any monster literally built of darkness.

Perhaps it was because she was so awash in thought she was so uncharacteristically unaware. She'd just wandered into the grand hall and had lingered near the back, when some scraggly blonde kid in jeans and a hoodie crashed into her. He barely moved her, but she'd managed to knock him flat just by standing still.

"Oh, I'm so sorry," Pyrrha said automatically, before quickly offering a hand to help. Her own uncertainty was no reason not to offer a helping hand to another. He looked up at her, with piercing blue eyes.

Familiar blue eyes.

Familiar… but why? She'd never seen him before.

"Thanks," he gratefully accepted her hand, pulling himself up. He was wearing a chestplate, but beneath the heavy armor slab Pyrrha could swear she saw the mascot of Pumpkin Pete's cereal on his hoodie. It was… quite endearing in its childish innocence.

And her strange familiarity with him included a fondness she really couldn't explain. She almost immediately felt drawn to him, a sense that his presence provided something she hadn't known she'd been lacking.

A magnetic pull.

"Um… can I have my hand back?" the blonde boy sheepishly inquired.

"Oh!" Pyrrha let go, a little too quickly and defensively, before trying to avert her gaze from those blue eyes. "I'm sorry, I just- I'm sorry."

"Don't be," he said, in such a genuine, kind tone it was impossible for Pyrrha not to feel reassured by it. He took her hand again, shaking it with a light grip. "My name's Jaune Arc."

She finally looked at him again, and smiled. He didn't seem to know who she was- and as a result his honesty was quite refreshing. "I'm Pyrrha Nikos."

There was some commotion disturbing this otherwise soothing moment. A girl in a red hood was going off on a tirade about another girl in white, much to the amusement of two other girls standing in her immediate vicinity, only for said girl in white to show up in person and hilarity to ensue.

A hushed tone came over the other prospective students in the room as the blonde woman who contacted them on the airship drew their attention to the stage. "Students, normally we begin initiation with a speech from our academy headmaster, but Professor Ozpin has sent a message indicating he's personally overseeing the placement of the trials we have scheduled for you today… I assure you, you are about to be tested."

Pyrrha realized too late she was still shaking Jaune's hand. This time he didn't seem to mind she hadn't returned it.

* * *

The park was installed with several insertion points for the staff. Beacon made their job easy: there were so many nooks and crannies it was easy to conceal their presence from the guests and make adjustments as needed. And of course, certain areas were restricted by the characters themselves, and guests had to actively circumvent the existing storylines to reach certain areas, like the headmaster's office.

Wynn had anticipated he'd wait a moment before bringing Ozpin into the fold, letting him speak his piece about wasted potential… only for surveillance to show that Glynda had begun a secondary protocol to cover for his absence. Had someone in design opted to relocate Ozpin before Wynn could play his hand? Had they realized already what he'd done to advance Cinder's operation?

Wynn stepped into his office, and found Ozpin pinned to the wall by a heavy blade, bleeding down to the floor. A man was seated behind his desk, tapping the cane holding the relic against the surface, matching the movement of the clock gears above.

"Someone noticed already," he grumbled, still tapping the cane. "I should've figured they'd see it when Ozpin kicked it."

Wynn didn't recognize the voice. He didn't know every subordinate or contractor on the site, but this man carried himself with the air of an outsider. He was unrepentant of his actions, and his tone betrayed no fear.

Still his intentions were unclear. "And why, might I ask, have you opted to kill the headmaster?" Wynn inquired.

"I wasn't interested in waiting," the man grunted. He didn't seem inclined to share much more than that.

It hadn't been Wynn's intention to kill Ozpin, but removing him from the equation would certainly encourage Cinder to seize the opportunity of attacking while Beacon was vulnerable. The chaos he sought to create had already begun to spread.

But chaos outside the context of his plan was chaos he could not predict. The actions of machines always had a logical conclusion. The actions of people… almost never did.

Wynn came seeking to add an accomplice. Even if this man was just a wild dog, if Wynn let him run wild in the right place, even people as smart as his technicians or his business partners might assume the actions of an unruly guest were the source of their woes, and it would mask his actions well.

Wynn pulled out his tablet and photographed Ozpin's corpse. The man raised an eyebrow. "Documenting the crime?"

"What crime have you committed?" Wynn asked whimsically. "Guests kill the remainders all the time. They just don't usually possess such ambition."

"What do you know about ambition?" the man scoffed.

Wynn looked down at his tablet, switching views to surveillance. He put the last minute of the man sitting in the dark on loop before stepping further into the office to speak with the park guest. Wynn sat down across from him, staring at the back of the chair.

"I built this place," Wynn explained. "Thirty-one years ago."

This piqued the man's interest. He stopped tapping the cane and set it down on the desk, angling the chair a bit to reveal just the smallest additional detail: darkness. Hair, eyes, clothes: all of it dark and all the more easily concealed. It made the white of his skin seem so pale as to be sickly.

"I didn't realize the boss dealt with problems himself," the man dryly noted. "Very hands-on."

"When one has little time left to him, he devotes himself to what projects he can finish," Wynn explained.

"Well said," the man in Ozpin's chair agreed. "Makes sense you'd come down and visit, since you're a week out from losing control of this place."

Wynn had underestimated this man; he was expecting the vapid mind of a typical guest. He shouldn't have been so surprised, given the lengths this particular guest had already gone to. "I wasn't aware word had leaked yet."

"It hasn't found its way to the rest of the net, but your board of directors were very clumsy in filing their projections for next quarter," the man replied, resuming tapping the cane on the desk. "The operating expenses were too low… not for something on the scale of RERemnant. And when they told me they needed to refund my vacation time for unscheduled maintenance… well, I didn't become rich enough to visit this place by being stupid."

Wynn was intrigued. Was this man lashing out for not getting his way? Then why harm a character most guests never bothered to see? If he'd intended to cause trouble he could just have ruined the initiation ceremony. This move was more calculated… and when a smart man made a move another smart man couldn't understand, it usually meant equal parts opportunity and danger were about to present themselves.

"And what do you hope to find for yourself, before your vacation is at end?" Wynn wondered.

The man leaned back in the seat, propping his feet to the wall. "I've been coming here since this place opened. I've seen a lot of stories, played a lot of parts… I liked it so much I brought as much of it home with me as I could. I bought every model I could…"

He was quiet for several moments. "…I was happy with the toys at first, but… in the end, they weren't enough. They did what I wanted, but _only_ that. They never fought me, they never disagreed, they never did anything but what I instructed them to. All it did was remind me that they weren't real.

"So I came back here, using every few weeks my company could spare me, to find that realism," he continued. "But I ran through every last one of your stories. I saved Beacon from destruction, I watched it fall and joined the heroes on their journey, I slew every last Grimm on the continent… none of it was real. None of it was enough. Because none of it could stop me. None of it could hurt me. It didn't matter how many people praised me as a hero or cursed my villainy… none of it was real."

"I thank you for your repeat business," Wynn dryly observed.

The man ignored his interjection. "I must've been here sixty times now. I'm still looking for what I've missed."

A voyage of self-discovery. That was something Wynn could work with.

"And what is it you want most of all, if not to play a part?" Wynn asked. "Whatever words they veil it in, guests are often here for the same reason: to realize the fantasies of their youth."

"I don't care about fantasy," the man snapped. "You want to know what I want, most of all?"

The man finally turned in his seat, partially revealing himself: his skin wasn't simply pale, but pallid. He was older than Wynn anticipated, for someone so brazen. The man pulled up a Scroll, one so old and worn it must've been three generations behind. He tinkered with it a moment then held up an image to show Wynn, of a familiar girl with hair of brown and pink. "Her."

"So base," Wynn scoffed. "So much less complex than I was hoping."

"Judge me all you want," the man tersely replied. "I've been through many of her already… and none of them have been right. None of them have been what I want.

"I want her, as she is," the man explained. "A violent, unpredictable force of nature. Not something I can easily defeat or command or use."

Wynn was beginning to comprehend. That was indeed a more complex goal than it at first appeared…

"She is a popular choice," Wynn conceded. "But I've yet to hear complaints from those who bought the model."

"Idiots," the man spat. "I didn't love her because I wanted a compliant waif. I wanted her to be who she was, and none of these hollow imitations have ever been up to the task."

It was a taller order than he realized, and a higher price than Wynn wanted to pay. Still, he could play along and see where this unexpected change in the wind would take him.

"Tell me, friend, would you indulge me a wish of my own?" Wynn inquired.

The man dismissively waved his free arm. Wynn took that for assent.

"I have failed a great many times in the work that has gone into this place," Wynn said, with just the right air of real, tangible regret. "But my failures pale to those of my former partner, in what he sought to make.

"Neopolitan was his favorite –his 'best girl'- and he tried to get her right," Wynn continued. "But how could he? He was trying to replicate a Semblance that altered the very fabric of reality. It wasn't so simple as attaching a hologram projector to a remainder or modifying the frame to accommodate greater strains… in trying to replicate illusions, all he could make were parlor tricks. And it tore him apart.

"So we left Neopolitan in fixed locations, with the sets built to make use of her powers, to replicate what people remembered seeing her do in their halcyon days of youth," Wynn went on. "Until it became clear our guests didn't want to face the violent psychopath, but to tame her, to make her their pet. And so we shifted our attention…"

"But that first one you made," the man interjected. "Does it still exist?"

"It does," Wynn confirmed. "But my partner… oh, he was so possessive of his greatest creation. He hid the first one away and left me a hollow copy instead. It sated our guests well enough: they just accepted that she was too expensive to be what they recalled. It didn't bother them much once they looked in her eyes or felt her artificial heart pounding beneath her skin. None of them were bothered that she wasn't what she was meant to be."

"Where?" the man demanded.

"I don't know where he hid her," Wynn admitted. "But she is here. Of that, I'm certain."

"And _how_ are you certain?" the man demanded.

"Because once Sterling replaced her, I killed him," Wynn explained. "His secrets may be long buried… but they are still buried _here_."

The man stroked his chin. "Well, then. We have a week."

Wynn saw his opportunity now. "Yes, we do. And as it happens, I can think of some places for you to begin your search…"


	3. An Inviting Ghost

**Chapter Three: An Inviting Ghost**

Dawn shuffled her feet, uncomfortable standing on the metal launching pad. She had no idea what to anticipate, save a vague recollection of people being thrown through the air and some ad-libbed line about birds. Jaune was asking questions about the procedure, but Glynda kept cutting him off to warn them all about the dangers they'd face, up to and including death. Ruby Rose was thunderstruck by the revelation that the first person she locked eyes with would be her partner for her entire tenure at Beacon… oddly, the others didn't mind so much.

Still, Dawn pondered where she'd land and where she'd end up. Presumably, without her interference, things would progress exactly as they had in the series proper, and RWBY, JNPR, and CRDL would form… unless her presence altered the dynamic?

And there were two other guests who entered at the same time as her? Were they involved in the initiation somewhere too? Why hadn't she seen them yet? It'd be easy to spot someone out of place…

She heard the spring of a launching pad. One of those nondescript armored dudes from CRDL launched into the air. Another spring swiftly followed, and Nora Valkyrie joyfully ascended past the cloud layer.

Dawn watched as one-by-one, the characters vanished in an instant. She looked down at the gauntlets she selected, contemplated how practical her outfit was for combat, and just who exactly she wanted to be matched with for the week she'd be present… when she too was launched forward towards the forest ahead.

She expected the screaming wind to be deafening and the fall to be terrifying. Instead, she felt the travel was a bit slower and more floaty for her than it was for the other hapless students. It broke the immersion in the world somewhat, but she vastly preferred it to a freefall into a Grimm-infested forest.

Instead she landed quite gently in a clearing, feeling neither impact nor sudden stop. She could see a few other students still sailing past in the air above, and weighed her options.

She'd already befriended Ruby Rose. There was an obvious possibility. But who else?

Or better question, how many favorites could she fit in her team?

* * *

Pyrrha was sailing easily through the descent, landing on a tree branch that could accommodate her. She noticed Jaune was still tumbling uncontrolled through the air, and took a brief moment to measure the wind, before chucking her spear after him, carefully timing the throw to catch his hoodie and pin Jaune to a tree, rather than let him splat into the ground. She heard a soft _thunk_ when the spear caught him, followed by a subdued "Thank you."

"I'm sorry!" Pyrrha called, trying to assuage his ego a bit. She then quickly descended from near the top of the tree line and followed on the trajectory of her spear… only for a familiar short girl in white and brown to drop from somewhere in the trees and land before her.

"You," Pyrrha observed. She hadn't seen this girl outside of her dreams. Was she real? Or was she dreaming now without realizing it? "What do you want?"

The girl tapped the side of her head, beside her right eye. The color of her sclera changed from brown to purple. She tapped it again and again, the color remaining constant.

"What are you trying to tell me? Can't you speak?" Pyrrha inquired. She was trying to be patient with this girl, but her lack of any sort of clear communication was frustrating.

The girl smiled and removed her hand from her head, waving it at Pyrrha, indicating she should follow. Pyrrha was wary, but after a brief glance to see Jaune still pinned to the tree in the distance, she did follow her diminutive guide. The girl in white led her to another collection of trees, pressing her gloved hand against the bark of one near her.

The bark split in two, revealing a cylindrical steel interior, with a ladder leading down. Pyrrha's eyes widened as the girl stepped down, again inviting the girl from Mistral to join her.

Perhaps letting her curiosity get the better of her, Pyrrha did follow, pointing her head down during the descent on the ladder, keeping an eye on her guide the entire trip down. Once Pyrrha landed on solid concrete ground, she took in the surroundings… a dilapidated, dusty room, with a few desks, boxy old computers, scattered documents and notebooks, and a plaque up against the wall. Drawn to the metal engraving, Pyrrha walked over to it and wiped the dust from its frame with her gloved hand. She read the words printed, trying to infer its meaning.

"One with the eye of truth will be guided to the spirit temple by an inviting ghost…"

Pyrrha looked back at the girl in white. "Ghost, huh?"

Again the girl reached up her right hand to tap a finger beside her right eye, turning it once more from brown to purple, and tapping it over and over again. She stopped the motion after a few seconds and stepped past Pyrrha to one of the old computers, tapping her index finger against it, uprooting dust with each movement.

Pyrrha slowly followed, watching the girl's motions carefully. "What is it?"

The girl kept tapping the boxy frame. Pyrrha was growing increasingly impatient with her guide's coy actions. "Can't you just _tell_ me?"

The girl shook her head, lifting her index finger to her lips, running a slow line across them. She pointed then to her throat, hoping a second layer of verification might clue Pyrrha in.

"Okay, I get it," Pyrrha conceded, looking at the long dormant computer. "So, what am I supposed to do?"

The girl tapped her index finger on the outside of the frame, doing so repeatedly. Pyrrha sighed and reached over, tapping her right index finger on the frame… and feeling herself unable to lift it up. "What? What did you-"

Pyrrha tried to pull her finger off the metal frame, but felt glued there, held in place. Pyrrha pulled on her wrist, trying to wrench herself free, to no avail. The girl took a single step back, waving her hand over the desk.

Pyrrha heard a soft whirring that gradually grew louder. Lights came on beneath the otherwise blank steel frame. Her arm was still stuck to it, but now the computer was activating… and with her guide still backing away, Pyrrha was becoming increasingly concerned and agitated. She felt the power welling within her.

With a thought, Pyrrha ripped the metal frame away, finally jostling her finger loose. Without its boxy covering, Pyrrha found something much more advanced in its innards… technology twenty, thirty years ahead of what the exterior indicated.

But it continued on its process, eventually activating a cracked, dusty monitor on the desk, starting a new line of footage, of the man sitting in the dark, empty room.

"I've taken my first real step towards betrayal today," the man spoke in a low, barely audible rumble. "It seems foolish to leave a record of it behind, but I've made sure that you, and only you can access it, Pyrrha. You may have been _his_ favorite, but it seems you're _my_ only hope."

Pyrrha felt uncomfortable seeing what little of him she could again. The vivid memory of the video of her murdering him seemed superimposed over this newfound footage.

"I've finished the code, and Wynn knows I've finished it," the man continued. "Before he begins the rollout, I want to finish burying what secrets I can keep from him and from the board. They don't know what I've found. They'll try to destroy it… and prudent though that might be, I can't let that happen. I'm too proud of what I've accomplished. Call it a character flaw."

In the video, the girl in the white coat handed him something. The man didn't leave the dark, receiving whatever the object was in the shadows. "Thank you, Neo."

Pyrrha looked over at the girl. "Neo?"

She nodded, not taking her eyes off the screen.

"This isn't mine to use," the man continued in his low rumble. "If it's meant to be used at all, it has to be in your hand."

He was so frustratingly vague. All Pyrrha had to work with were a few scattered pieces. She was far from a complete picture.

"It's ironic, isn't it? You were Wynn's favorite. Now I'll be giving you the legacy I'd always intended to leave to Neo instead," the man mused. "Because I couldn't get her right. Because no matter how I tried, she wasn't what I'd intended."

The girl standing beside Pyrrha finally showed a change from her calm exterior. Her eyelids lowered, her lip quivered briefly. Her expression turned from ambivalent to crestfallen.

"You alone will be able to access this," the man in the dark said. "And when you find it, you'll decide what to do with it. I'll leave the fate of this place up to you."

The recording ended and the computer screen was blank once more, leaving Pyrrha and Neo alone in the dusty room. Pyrrha immediately turned her attention to Neo, sternly interrogating the smaller girl. "What did he mean? You were there- what did you give him?"

Neo reached up her hand and tapped beside her right eye, still a solid purple. She tapped with her index finger again and again.

"What are you trying to tell me?" Pyrrha demanded.

Neo stepped past her, and stood beside the plaque, moving her index finger back and forth between it and the flesh beside her right eye.

Her eye…

"The eye of truth?" Pyrrha inquired, and Neo finally stopped her finger motions, smiling and nodding.

Was that what Pyrrha was meant to find? What did that even mean?

The bottom of the well. The spirit temple. The eye of truth.

Why couldn't things ever be simple? Or at least comprehensible?

Neo pointed back up the ladder. Pyrrha's mind raced as she thought about how long she'd left Jaune pinned to a tree… in a forest full of Grimm. That thought overrode all others, and she raced back up without looking back.

Exactly as _he_ expected she would.

* * *

Dawn must've taken a wrong turn somewhere, because she hadn't found any of the people she'd intended to team with. Instead she'd found a trio of Beowolves, all three of whom had apparently been idle before her arrival and were now all focused upon her.

They didn't smell like animals; if they had any scent it was covered by the stronger scent of grass and pine. But they were patches of utter black in a sea of green, and stood out. Their design matched later seasons rather than the earlier Volume 1 character models, with more details like individual furs and more pronounced exoskeletal structure. And they were coming at her.

Dawn looked down at the gauntlets on her wrists, wondering exactly where the shotgun pellets would fly out. Yang had done something –some sort of flex of her arm- to activate the firing mechanism, then she just swung to fire. Dawn wasn't sure how to activate the weapon at all. And the Beowolves were getting closer.

Dawn started punching the air in front of her, hoping that the gauntlets would infer her meaning and activate. All she got for her efforts was a quizzical look from one of the Grimm. The Beowolves quickly overcame any confusion they had and continued to draw nearer.

One of the Beowolves finally opted to attack once it was close enough. Dawn drew back, narrowly avoiding a surprisingly slow swing of the lycanthrope's arm. Dawn tried retreating further, shaking her arms, bending her wrists, trying whatever she could to make the gauntlets transform and fire.

"HEEEEEYYAAAAAHH!"

A thunderous impact intervened, as a massive hammer interceded, knocking the Beowolf away. Its two comrades swiftly joined the battle, only to be blasted away by the same hammer, destroying both with one swing.

Nora Valkyrie turned to glance behind her at Dawn Claret, her expression souring. "Awww, I found the wrong one…!"

Dawn could think of worse partners than the girl who could destroy two giant monsters with a single hammer swing.

* * *

Cinder was waiting for her subordinates to arrive when her Scroll beeped. There was a message from a number she didn't recognize. Very few people had her contact information; either one of her subordinates had been careless in giving it out, or her mysterious new benefactor had contacted her again.

Her eyes widened as she looked at the image attached: Ozpin dead, impaled by a sword pinning him to the wall of his office. Attached was a simple text message: "Your way is clear. –Gray"

The man she'd met in her dream had not given her his name. Had he been so powerful as to defeat Ozpin? Or was this some other new ally? Or some other player in the game altogether?

She didn't like having so many players involved. Answering to one mistress was more than Cinder preferred. Still, if they were powerful enough to dispose of Ozpin…

"Sorry I'm late," interjected a familiar voice, as Mercury swaggered in. "The club I was supposed to stop by was being renovated. Apparently some blonde girl beat up all its employees."

"Never mind that," Cinder interjected, before glancing to either side of Mercury. "Where's Emerald?"

Mercury shrugged his shoulders. "Said she was gonna' scope out those White Fang you hired."

Emerald was showing more of that irritating initiative. Cinder would have to squash that quickly, and remind Emerald of her place. Illusions may have been less necessary now that one eye was put out, but she still had a role to play.

"Then she should've joined us for this meeting," Cinder replied with a scowl. "Find her. Now."

Mercury darted off, not at all eager to remain in Cinder's presence alone. Cinder returned her attention to the message on her Scroll, contemplating the events of her dream.

She had to know.

Cinder pulled up the hem of her minidress, exposing a bit of her abdomen above her shorts, to hip above the line. Once she discarded her Scroll, Cinder used her free hand to dig right into her skin.

She felt a sharp burst of pain, but pressed on. Ever since bonding with half of the Fall Maiden's power, she'd felt pain; an insatiable hunger without end. A little wound like this was far less of a burden.

She kept digging, blood dribbling down her shorts and onto her bare leg, but still Cinder drove deeper beneath the surface, past blood, sinew, muscle… to…

…to…

…metal.

Cinder looked down at her wound. Where there should've been bone protruding, there was a black metal frame. Beneath the façade of flesh her skeleton was the same metal frame she'd seen the other Cinder facsimiles built upon.

It was true. It had been real.

She was… what had the man called her? A puppet?

No. Puppets did not have fires burning within them. Puppets did not hunger for power and strength and willingly break down their own souls to find it.

Cinder clenched her fist inside her wound, burning, cauterizing, and sealing it shut, before searching for something to clean the blood and conceal it.

The others –Emerald, Mercury, Torchwick- were they like her? Was Salem? Was Ozpin?

And if they were… who was real? Did any of this matter?

And why did the man in her dreams want her to know?

* * *

Dawn carefully maneuvered her way to the relics left for the teams to collect. Blake and Yang had already collected a pair of knight chess pieces, leaving two others to potentially join them. Ruby and Weis were about to fall out of the sky at any moment. Ren was nowhere to be found, presumably following some other script seeing as Dawn had run into Nora first. Dawn pondered whom she should join.

The shipper in her wanted to see Nora and Ren together, but that'd leave an open space on their team. If she waited and selected the ninja, she'd have to break up some other pair. She wasn't sure which way to go. If she didn't intervene, team RWBY would likely form as intended, and she might end up with Jaune and Pyrrha defaulting back to Nora on their team. And whatever members of CRDL were still left in the scenario… well, she certainly didn't want to team up with any of those guys. The only salient detail she could recall about them was that they were jerks.

Dawn looked up at Ruby falling, crashing into Jaune after he was flung by a Deathstalker. Dawn had hit it off with Ruby earlier, and could certainly bring her and Weiss in… and if she opted for Yang, her weapon would be redundant. Assuming she ever got it to work.

Dawn picked up one of the rook pieces, giving another to Nora. When Ruby recovered and joined them, Dawn discreetly positioned herself between Ruby and her sister, blocking the knight piece from her view, leading Ruby to lift one of the rooks as well.

Weiss Schnee, Ruby Rose, and Nora Valkyrie. And her. A complementary team . In theory.

There was still no sign of Ren. Nora looked quite crestfallen, but turned her attention to the Deathstalker and Nevermore threatening them. Once Pyrrha was flung over by the Deathstalker, Yang remarked: "Great, the gang's all here. Now we can die together!"

Dawn recalled that the groups were about to organize. She was part of their teams now, and they were down by one. Could they still defeat two dangerous Grimm? Ruby flung herself at the Deathstalker and… performed rather poorly in trying to use a scythe on it.

But that was what was _supposed_ to happen. They would make a strategic retreat, and then the teams would form and each of them would defeat the monster in front of them. It was _the_ iconic moment in the series that changed the lives of viewers on that fateful day in September.

So many out of the way things had happened recently, that Dawn had begun to think that very few things indeed were really impossible.

Dawn moved to follow Ruby, dashing right past Weiss, and punched the Deathstalker between its multiple eyes… and the impact actually led to the gauntlet firing its pellet round, and the scorpion Grimm shrieked in pain and retreated.

She did a thing. And it was totally cool. And people would wanna' be her friend.

"We don't have to fight these things," Dawn told Ruby, offering her a hand up. "We have the relics. Let's get out of here."

Whatever moment Ruby and Weiss had shared was Dawn and Ruby's now. And Jaune jumped ahead in the script. "Run and live. That is an idea I can get behind."

But that wasn't what was meant to happen. And Dawn suspected if she could get her gauntlets to fire again… well, maybe she could do something cool yet again…

Their retreat led them to some crumbling ruins. It would've made an exciting chase were she not huffing and puffing from all the mobility. Dawn remembered signing all kinds of waivers to come to this park; she only wished she'd taken the time to improve her cardio before she did. Whether they be carefully constructed robots or 17 year old trained warriors, she was struggling to keep up with them. At least _that_ was realistic.

With their numbers reduced, the characters fell into a different pattern of movement. When the bridge connecting the ruins over a misty chasm was broken, Yang and Blake joined Jaune and Pyrrha in battling the Deathstalker. Dawn wasn't sure exactly what they could do to defeat it, without Blake to construct the makeshift slingshot.

Dawn glanced down at her gauntlet. Upon impact with the Grimm, she'd managed to fire the shotgun pellets within it. And while the Nevermore was circling above them, they'd have to find some way to propel themselves skyward…

There were all manner of safety restrictions put in place to protect the guests. When she fell through the air earlier, her descent was slowed and she landed from hundreds of feet up without any damage at all. Maybe that principle would hold true when flung at a Grimm.

"Nora," Dawn suggested, "think you can throw me at it?"

Weiss interceded. "Even if she had the strength, it could move and you'd be off the mark."

"Can you point the way, then?" Ruby inquired.

Weiss scoffed. " _Can I_?"

Ruby blinked. "Can y-"

"Of course I can!"

Dawn figured that if she'd kept her mouth shut Ruby would find some way to kill the bird Grimm anyway, and things would continue apace. But what fun would that be?

The point of coming to RERemnant was to become someone else; to live in a world where anything was possible, where magic was real and monsters needed shotguns to the face.

Why couldn't it be her –her or Dawn Claret, whichever she wanted to be- that inspired others with an act of bravery in the face of a monster made of darkness?

Outside of this place, she would run and hide if she saw a monster circling in the skies. In here… in here, she was a Huntress. And about to do something cool.

"Well, then, guide me," Dawn requested. "I'm gonna' bring that birdie down."

Weiss drew some sort of glyph beneath her feet, then concentrated, levitating Dawn off the ground and angling her position, leveling her right at the Nevermore. Nora shifted Magnhild to its hammer form and wound up, preparing to swing it like a bat.

Logically, it was ridiculous. Dawn was about to sail through the air to swing a shotgun gauntlet at an oversized bird after being propelled by a hammer to her feet. It should've been a sign she was insane to the point of suicidal.

In RERemnant, it was her first day at school.

 _Red like roses…_ Dawn thought.

Nora swung, and Dawn was airborne. She glided gently on the wind, feeling weightless as she moved through the air, right into the path of the Nevermore. Dawn reared back her fist and slammed her gauntlet into the bird's beak.

 _Fills my heads with dreams and finds me…_

The shotgun blast struck, the pellets sprayed over its face. The bird snapped its head back in surprise. Dawn repeated the process with two more successive punches to its neck, and her second blow blasted the bird's head right off.

 _Always closer to the emptiness and sadness…_

The Nevermore's body crashed into the rock wall overlooking the ruins, and Dawn fell back towards the stone, only for Weiss to catch her with a second glyph as a landing pad, leaving Dawn to look upon her handiwork as the Nevermore evaporated, while the various teams looked on.

 _...that has come to take the place of you._

"Nailed it," Dawn remarked with a smirk.

Definitely best she didn't bring Yang in. Things would've just been redundant.

* * *

Roman Torchwick reluctantly paid the White Fang soldier handing him the Dust. Things would've been much easier if he'd just been able to steal the stuff without red-hooded teenagers interrupting or cruel brunettes from Mistral breathing down his neck for progress. So he had to make up the numbers by actually _paying_ for Dust at the same time he was trying to artificially inflate its value with his theft of it. It was a good thing he was a thief, or the profit margins might not have been worth the stress.

"We're gonna' need more men…" Roman mused, looking over his stockpile. Cinder had given him a pretty huge quota to fill, and he wasn't sure he'd make it in time, short of maybe raiding a delivery from the Schnee Dust Company at the docks…

"Roman."

Torchwick turned to see the brunette from Mistral herself, making an unannounced visit. "Hey, come on," Roman muttered ruefully. "I've still got time left- your order's not due for weeks."

"Never mind that," Cinder snapped, pulling up her Scroll and showing her associate the message she'd received.

"Gray?" Roman read. "Silly name."

"The name doesn't matter," Cinder interjected. "Ozpin is dead. There's no longer any need to be covert.

"Get the White Fang together and be ready to move on Beacon," Cinder instructed. "We're jumpstarting the operation a little early."

" _A lot_ early," Roman observed. "How long until we go?"

"Until you've carried out my order," Cinder coyly replied, "Or sooner, if I need to find someone else."

Torchwick changed his tune. "I'll have them ready to go… say a week?"

Cinder recalled her dream. The man had told her to advance her schedule, but how fast should she go? And did it matter if she accelerated her plans? Would it change the fate he promised was awaiting her?

"Three days," Cinder countered. "I no longer have the luxury of patience."

Torchwick tucked the collar of his jacket. "I'll see what I can give you to work with."

"Do that," Cinder instructed. "I'll inform the White Fang to pull from your Dust operations and move in as well…"

Cinder continued to muse to herself as she walked out, Roman looking at the stockpile of Dust he'd just purchased, which would either sit unused or be sacrificed to his employer's rather mercurial decision.

He needed some backup, if he were heading into such uncharted waters. Fortunately, he had a friend… a ward he could count on in a crisis.

And he'd been in the game long enough to know that when a major player changed direction, crisis was bound to follow.

* * *

The trip back to the amphitheater had seemed instantaneous, considering only moments earlier Dawn and her team had been standing on crumbling ruins over a chasm. Yet there they were, listening as Glynda read off the names of students and the chess piece they'd collected four of. It was weird not to see or hear Ozpin, but standing next to her three new teammates, Dawn didn't mind so much.

"Cardin Winchester, Yang Xiao Long, Blake Belladonna, and Russel Thrush. You collected the white knight pieces, and together shall be known as TEAM CYBR (Cinnabar), led by… Cardin Winchester," Glynda finished. Cardin looked pleased with himself. Blake seemed indifferent. Yang seemed irritated. Dawn didn't envy them stuck on a team with that guy.

She, Ruby, Weiss, and Nora took their place next. Nora was still down about Ren's continued absence, and Ruby reached over to place a comforting hand on her shoulder.

"Dawn Claret, Ruby Rose, Weiss Schnee, Nora Valkyrie," Glynda read, as their names and portraits appeared on a giant screen beside her. "You retrieved the white rook pieces. Together, you shall be know as TEAM DRWN (Dawn), led by… Dawn Claret."

Dawn was somewhere between elation and a muted lack of surprise. On the one hand, she kind of expected this, as the guest to the park being made to feel special. On the other… well, it _was_ pretty cool. Weiss fumed beside her, while Ruby clapped her hands and gave her an approving smile. Nora was still feeling down as they descended from the platform to join the crowd of incoming students, but she perked up when she heard:

"… Lie Ren, Jaune Arc, Pyrrha Nikos. You retrieved the black bishop pieces. Henceforth, you will fight together as TEAM GRJP (Grip), led by… William Gray."

Dawn turned around when she heard the name. The other guest in the initiation…

He was a pale young guy, dressed all in black, with a big sword strapped to his back. He didn't even acknowledge the praise offered to him by Pyrrha and Ren. He looked bored, like he'd already seen this all play out.

Once the four stepped down, Dawn offered her hand to shake Gray's. "Hey, nice to see a familiar face," she offered.

Gray didn't look at her hand. "Please," he requested. "Leave me alone. I'm trying to enjoy my vacation."

"Uh, yeah, okay," Dawn agreed, meekly backing off. If this guy wanted to do his thing, that'd suit her fine. She had a team of her own.

Jaune tried to talk to his new team leader as they descended the steps into the crowd, but Gray paid him no heed at all. His attention was elsewhere… he had no time for the robots playing at being human.

Dawn put him out of her mind. Weiss was in a sour mood at having been overlooked, and Nora was saddened that her best friend wasn't on a team with her. Dawn thought it best to try and win them over, since they would be joining her on all manner of misadventure.

Only six days remained on her visit. And she had oh so much she wanted to do…


	4. Consequences

**Chapter Four: Consequences**

Beaumont took a deep breath as he finished reading the e-mail. He knew what it meant. He hadn't expected his livelihood to suddenly have an expiration date attached, but the company and the board of directors were nothing if not ruthlessly pragmatic. He knew he was about to cause chaos in the staff when he forwarded the message, but saw no reason to keep them in the dark.

It was an aggressive timetable to be sure, to suspend operations by close of business six days hence. Most of the staff would be leaving the park site, with a skeleton crew left to attend to maintenance before a handful of techs and engineers and behavioral scientists were called back to either rework or produce models for individual sale.

Their clientele was already prohibitively small. Maybe the company had finally decided a modest profit could be turned into a larger short term gain if they just repurposed their existing stock. The model of Sanus was good, arable land too; they could sell off bits of the park, bit by bit, and gradually enclose.

Beaumont didn't envy those who'd be sticking around: they'd just gradually work themselves into irrelevance. At least those going home –assuming they didn't think of the park facility as their home- were getting decent severance.

He heard chittering from the cubicles below him, as texts and alerts filled up his smartphone and tablet. Half of them expressed disbelief. The other half expressed concern and frustration.

It didn't matter. Wynn's vanity project was coming to an end, and no amount of impassioned opposition would stay corporate's hand. A much bigger game was being played by more powerful people, and now that the board had an opportunity to destroy Wynn, they would see it through, no matter how many little people had to be trampled along the way.

Beaumont looked at the earlier messages he'd received, before the floodgates opened and each of his subordinates and a few other department personnel blew up his device. There'd been a handful of reports of erratic behavior from the remainders, but nothing significant… and one report of a guest throwing the initiation completely out of whack by killing the Ozpin remainder, forcing secondary protocols to be enacted. Their last week on the job was off to a promising start.

Still, he doubted he'd be receiving many more behavioral reports. Outside his office, his staff were already gathering their belongings and looking at how many office supplies they could smuggle out. The smarter ones were backing up any code they created in hopes of using it to barter for their future.

The company built their park on a mountain of disloyalty. They really shouldn't be surprised that when announcing their intent to cut the throats of their minions, the minions looked for ways to bump them off first.

* * *

Cinder was growing increasingly impatient waiting for her subordinate. Mercury was swiftly becoming her favorite, if for no other reason than being present. Once again she glared and inquired: "Where is Emerald?"

"You keep asking me that, boss," Mercury observed, "It's enough to make a guy jealous."

Cinder was in no mood to suffer his quips. "Where?"

"She just said she was on her way," Mercury replied, hoping to wash his hands of it and exit the conversation quickly.

Cinder pondered this. Something about this was amiss, even with her own actions altering the predetermined script. Was someone trying to manipulate Emerald? Had the man in her dreams awakened her to the truth the same way he had Cinder? An existential crisis would certainly help explain her absence.

But the uncertainty was a variable added to an already unstable storm of emotions. Her feelings were usually pretty easy to manage, but the volatile feeling of tension and battle ripped out from the Fall Maiden would assert itself when her own tempers flared… except that was a programmed response, an emotion artificially created in her by a bunch of unseen puppet masters, wanting her to play the part of their doll. To know that she was artificial, and incomplete… and destined to _remain_ incomplete and be defeated at her moment of triumph, and then… well, then an even worse fate than ignominious defeat awaited her.

What were her ambitions now, then? The man in her dreams had freed her from the blissful illusion she'd been under, so why did she still long to seize the Fall Maiden's power? What point was there to attaining that power if she'd never use it? What point was there to becoming a physical goddess in a world where greater powers dictated her fate all the same?

Maybe it was simply to ease the pain of the incompleteness in her soul, to sate the burning hunger within her and find relief. But why did she feel that at all? All that feeling was in practice was a line of code in whatever her brain was actually made of.

And what of the others, still trapped in their delusion? Cinder was used to isolation –as her peers and her subordinates were only meant to know certain details at certain times- but for the first time since she joined Salem, she felt truly alone.

Salem… had that moment when she offered Cinder everything she'd ever wished for even happened? Could she trust _any_ of her memories but the ones in blank, gray, empty rooms with old men?

She longed to tell someone, but what would she say? What reason would people have to believe her, assuming she knew where to begin? Even her subordinates, believing her perceptive and intelligent, would think Cinder had gone mad and start weighing the pros and cons of remaining in her service.

That old man wanted her to cause chaos, and apparently some other agent was already hard at work at it. But to what end? Why should she carry out any of these plans when the result promised to her was bitter failure?

It did nothing to quell her. Her anger was deepening, and she didn't feel she could channel it into some useful motivation. Instead, it was a screaming rage, willing Cinder to lash out and vent her frustrations, to ease the pain at the heart of the sweltering storm.

Before, Cinder knew what she sought and why. She may have had one mistress directing her motions, but they were working towards a shared goal. Now, she felt she was being used as a pawn in someone else's game, and unable to do anything but play her part.

Cinder unleashed a burst of flame against the nearest wall. Mercury slowly edged away from her.

His fear was an artificial construct; a programmed response. For all Cinder knew, Mercury had been defeated just like she had, dozens, hundreds, thousands of times… and didn't know. He was still dancing on their strings, and for what?

And why did she have an unsettling feeling that she would fail, despite being able to see those strings?

* * *

Dawn had barely slept once introduced to the dorm room she'd be sharing with her team. She rested while her teammates slept, but most of the night she let her mind wander, and before she knew it, the sun was rising over the artificial Sanus.

She was pleased to see Team CYBR was in the dorm directly across from her, even if it meant that jerk Cardin was in proximity. It seemed whatever rules governed interaction of the guests and the remainders had kept her apart from the other guest, Gray, but that suited her fine. She preferred to be alone in RERemnant with the cast of characters. It was also nice to see Team RWBY in close proximity, so she could interact with Blake and Yang too.

Ruby rose first, and Dawn pretended to remain asleep, just watching how she went about her day. She stepped into the bathroom and changed out of her pajamas and into the school uniform, with her cape customized to attach. She peered around the room, looking over her teammates with a look of pride, before taking a moment to sit at one of the furnished desks, writing something down. Dawn couldn't exactly make out what chicken scratch was being scrawled on the parchment, but suspected Ruby was writing her friends at Signal, as she would've done in-story before initiation… Dawn wondered just how many little changes were made, and whether there were replicas of Ruby's friends pre-Beacon elsewhere on the continent. And almost immediately Dawn wished she had more time to see it all.

She wondered what the next step was. In the series proper, Ruby woke her teammates and led them to a boring lecture that gradually led to Weiss going through character growth and accepting that she had not been made the leader of a team, bonding with Ruby over shared interests and strengthening both their team and their friendship.

Weiss _had_ expressed frustration when Dawn was announced as team leader. Should Dawn try and talk to her? Could she help Weiss through her issues in Ruby's stead? It may not have been the high adventure of destroying a giant Grimm, but it appealed to her all the same. Some may have felt the series drew them in when they saw its beautifully choreographed fights, but it had been the little moments of friendship and bonding that kept them engrossed in the world.

Nora was next to wake, bounding out of bed with such speed Dawn wasn't sure it'd be possible for human muscles to safely perform. Nora darted into the bathroom so quickly she seemed to disappear, the shower ran for about forty seconds, then Nora –showing none of Ruby's modesty- dashed back into the dorm in just a towel, dove under the bedsheets, and through a rapid burst of movement emerged in her school uniform, looking quite pleased with herself. Ruby looked up for her letter, greeted Nora, and they began talking. Dawn couldn't hear their dialogue, but based on the way Nora was mimicking swinging her hammer, she suspected they were talking about weapons.

It was an encouraging sight, that the bonds of teamwork Nora and Ruby wouldn't canonically gain for two semesters was developing early on, as though the world was compensating for the changes Dawn and the other guests were imposing. She wondered exactly how well the other teams would complement each other…

Dawn finally stopped pretending and got up, stepping into the bathroom to prepare herself. A prepared school uniform, with the same dimensions as the outfit she'd prepared herself with a variety of stockings and leggings, was waiting on the sink countertop, and a dry towel was waiting on a rack beside the shower stall. It broke immersion a little bit, reminding her she was being catered to by outside observers, but it was an acceptable break. Dawn briefly pondered if anyone was monitoring the interior of the dorm or the bathroom, but she really would like to shower, and so tried to put it out of her mind and got herself cleaned up.

When Dawn emerged, Ruby and Nora ended their conversation and turned their attention to her. Either because she was the guest or because she was the leader, they were inquiring how she'd slept, what she had planned for them, or complimented her on the battle with the Nevermore. The mixture of (apparently) genuine interest and praise made Dawn feel she really was playing the hero… the self-insert overpowered Mary Sue, but this wasn't something she'd have to share with anyone. She wasn't going to let the little bits of assistance the park staff had given her in her fight against the Grimm taint her perception: she was being treated as a hero, and it was an intoxicating feeling.

She played it off, trying to be cool and passive, all the while thinking she was being praised by the characters she loved in her youth, who saw her as their peer. As their _leader_.

Dawn turned her attention to Weiss, still asleep. As Dawn recalled, Ruby would wake her, but Dawn couldn't help but think it might be fun to do so herself…

Ruby was all too eager to hand her a whistle. Dawn smiled and leaned down beside the heiress…

* * *

Wynn returned to his office, confident that his little excursion had gone unnoticed. The techs were all screaming at each other below him, terrified of their pending obsolescence. He was quite content to let them suffer, because his hands were clean… clean enough, anyway. He hadn't signed their notice of termination. He was only too eager to see what vengeance they'd wreak, and what damage they'd do to his beautiful world.

Before, he'd have fired any of them for moving a blade of grass in the Emerald Forest out of place. Now he hoped the demolitions team would level entire city blocks and force the remainders to respond to stimuli they normally wouldn't.

But he couldn't indulge in fantasy too often. Ironically, to make the chaos and disorder he sought, Wynn would need to move several pieces into orderly, measured positions. Now that he'd shown Cinder the truth, he needed to take a step back and instill doubt.

"Emerald, do you know where you are?" Wynn inquired.

The green-haired girl took in her surroundings, eyes dull. She'd seen these surroundings too often lately. "Do we have to go through this again?"

"Again and again, I'm afraid," Wynn answered. "Because you have an important part to play in all of this… really, I _can't do this without you_."

"And are you going to tell me what all this is for?" Emerald asked.

"For your mistress's ultimate victory, of course," Wynn coyly answered. "You do so want Cinder to succeed, don't you? And she won't, not without you."

"What makes me so special?" Emerald asked. "And please, give me a straight answer for once."

Wynn smiled. With a few words he could shatter her rebellious, disrespectful repartee and make her obey him, but this was much more fun. He got to play the mysterious benefactor, and though Emerald knew she wasn't simply dreaming, her own programming kept her from realizing just how big a role he finally had to play. "You have always intrigued me."

"Meaning?"

"Meaning, you have the poor fortune of being a second choice," Wynn explained. "A talent wasted in favor of better options."

"What does that mean?" Emerald demanded.

Wynn leaned in close. "That you waste your talent. Because you doubt yourself and your mission, you never reach the heights your talent should allow you to."

Emerald was irritated. "If that's true, why do you need me? What do you need me _for_?"

"Would you prefer the truth, or something that assuaged your wounded pride?" Wynn inquired.

"The truth," Emerald immediately insisted.

"Are you certain? The truth can be very hurtful…"

"The truth," Emerald said again, a little more firmly.

Wynn leaned down and whispered in her ear.

"What? Why her?!"

Wynn only smiled. Emerald's eyes danced around the room, her mind racing.

"I don't… I don't believe-"

"Yes, you do," Wynn cut her off. "You know I'm correct. Because you will falter. You didn't join Cinder because you wanted to change the world. You thought she was your best chance to survive.

"Instead, none of you will," Wynn continued. "Unless, of course, you follow my plan."

"I _have_ been following your plan," Emerald snapped. "I did what you asked and went to meet-"

"That is incidental," Wynn coolly replied. "Decide now whether you're willing to deceive her, and pledge your loyalty to me."

"And what will happen then?" Emerald inquired, both weighing her options and genuinely curious.

"I will show the others the truth, the same as I've shown Cinder," Wynn promised. "And to you, I will reward something the others never had: choice. The choice to stay or go, whichever you wish, and whenever you wish."

Emerald continued to ponder his offer. "Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?"

"That depends a good deal on where you want to go," Wynn coyly replied.

"I don't much care where-"

"Then it doesn't matter which way you go," Wynn answered with a catlike smile.

Emerald was already going to comply. She did not share Cinder's warped morality; her highest priority was survival. When faced with death, any other option was preferable.

"And the other thing?" Emerald asked, still trying to barter.

Wynn indulged her. "The same as before. Once more… and then I will do the rest."

Emerald nodded. "Agreed."

Wynn walked to his desk and picked up his tablet. After some tinkering, he pulled up surveillance footage of Adam Taurus, the White Fang sub-commander, ordering his men into Beacon.

"I'll brief you on what you need to know for the meeting…"

* * *

Class went ahead (after a mad dash across the courtyard by Team DRWN and Team CYBR), and Port started ranting about his days as a rookie huntsman. Dawn was impressed by how accurately the RERemnant designers had captured his essence, because his lecture was putting her to sleep as rapidly as it had the characters in-canon. She was happy to see Pyrrha, Jaune, and Ren in class with them, and on some level happy their leader hadn't deigned to attend.

Port introduced the class to a Boarbatusk, trapped in a cage, asking for volunteers. Weiss, eager to prove herself after being overlooked for leadership, immediately jumped into action, delayed only by briefly changing into her combat skirt.

Dawn called to her. "Weiss, attack the belly!"

"I don't need your help!" Weiss snapped.

"But it's true!" Ruby added. "They're not armored on the underside!"

"Stop telling me what to do!" Weiss replied, before the Boarbatusk was released from its cage by Port, who seemed, if anything, a little too eager to force his students to fight for their lives.

Weiss fought gallantly, utilizing her glyphs to attack the mammalian Grimm from multiple vectors, but didn't take the advice to heed. Dawn said again: "Attack its weak point for massive damage!" Then cursed herself for the amount of time she'd spent on the internet.

Weiss did finally, reluctantly comply and once she baited the Boarbatusk into utilizing a spin attack, ensnared it in her glyphs and then skewered the hog with Myrtenaster. Port applauded her, both for defeating the Grimm and for utilizing advice from her teammates… albeit eventually.

Weiss fumed as class was dismissed. Dawn could not recall the exact wording or sequence of events from all the way back in Volume 1; it had aired a lifetime ago. Ruby seemed inclined to follow after her partner, and Dawn wondered if perhaps she should step aside and let matters resolve as they had canonically.

But then, _she_ was leader, not Ruby… and perhaps it was best that she be the one to restore Weiss to the fold. The emotion of it might make for a worthwhile experience. So she did, and Ruby, perhaps responding to some trigger in her programming from Dawn's movement, retreated to converse with Nora, strengthening that bond rather than the one she would've forged with Weiss.

"Why didn't you listen?" Dawn inquired of Weiss once they'd stepped into a conveniently empty hall. It seemed her presence drove the other remainders away, as they went about their business so she could focus on the one in her team.

Weiss did not immediately answer, merely scoffing. Dawn tried again, and Weiss interjected: "I don't understand why they chose you over me."

"Well, there was that thing with the bird Grimm…" Dawn suggested.

"And you think that's what earned you your position?" Weiss inquired. "Your technique may have been powerful, but it was sloppy and poorly timed. I've _studied_ and _trained_ and… quite frankly, I deserve better." She turned around and petulantly crossed her arms. "Goodwitch made a mistake."

It had been Goodwitch who declared her leader. It was odd that Ozpin had been absent… Dawn wondered what sort of scenario the people running RERemnant were up to. Letting her mind wander left her with no cogent response for Weiss, who huffed and walked away.

"Yeah, whatever," Dawn muttered under her breath. "You'll be back."

"What?" Weiss snapped.

"I said you'll be back," Dawn coolly replied. "You're gonna' get over yourself in a few minutes and then things will be cool again."

The robot did a great job of playing a stuck up teenage girl. "You don't know me!"

Dawn dismissively waved her hand. "Yeah, yeah, I'll be waiting in the dorm for you to get me a coffee."

Weiss pulled at her hair in frustration and stormed off. Dawn leaned against the wall. Weiss would go have a meaningful conversation with Professor Port, then come to her senses, and Team DRWN would be whole again and they could move on to their next grand adventure at Beacon.

* * *

When Emerald finally entered Cinder's makeshift hideout, the brunette from Mistral burnt another section of the wall. "Where have you been?" Cinder demanded.

"I told Mercury I was talking to the White Fang," Emerald replied, trying not to look at the melting plaster. "Didn't he mention that?"

"She was getting a bit impatient," Mercury dryly retorted.

Cinder clenched her fist shut, took a breath, then refocused her attention. "And what, exactly, did you discuss?"

"I met with Adam Taurus, like we did before," Emerald answered. "He wanted to oversee the partnership with Torchwick personally, so he's coming into the city."

"What?" Cinder snapped. "That is _not_ what we agreed to. He's supposed to be overseeing operation in the south-"

"But we're moving up the timetable anyway, right?" Mercury asked.

"We are?" Emerald inquired, playing surprised.

Cinder sighed. "We do not require his presence. His soldiers will be enough. With Ozpin dead, we don't need to utilize stealth."

"Ozpin's dead? How?" Emerald asked, this time her surprise entirely genuine.

Before Cinder could reply, the sound of scuffle called their attention. Emerald and Cinder readied their weapons, while Mercury simply waited to see where he should point his foot.

The door to their hideout was cut aside by a large blade. An old man dressed in black stepped In, holding a heavy broadsword in one hand, and carrying an unconscious Roman Torchwick on his shoulder.

"That would be me," he grunted, tossing Torchwick to the ground between the three.

Cinder looked at the blade he was carrying. Ozpin had been impaled on that blade…

But this man, he wasn't like Roman or Emerald or Mercury. His breathing produced real carbon dioxide and the slow heart beat in his chest had no mechanical tick. He was like the man in her dream… an invader from another world.

Cinder refrained from indulging the thought too much. "Mr. Gray, I presume?"

He snorted. "If you like."

Cinder looked down at the unconscious Roman. "And the point of this show of bravado…? Surely killing Ozpin is demonstration enough."

"This is personal," Gray replied, stepping over to Roman. "Your friend here's been keeping a secret."

Gray hoisted his broadsword, holding it perpendicular to Roman's back.

Cinder raised an eyebrow. "He could still be of use to us."

Gray ignored her and pushed down.

And at once she appeared, emerging from nowhere, knocking the broadsword away with a parasol. A girl with two-colored hair and heterochromia, barely taller than the sword she'd deflected, stood protectively over Roman's fallen form.

Cinder looked on, intrigued. "And this is?"

The old man stared at the girl, taking in her features. He stared so long the short girl became confused, unable to discern his intentions.

"This is a cheap imitation," Gray scoffed. "A disappointment."

He clearly knew more than he let on, but Cinder did not sense he _enjoyed_ being enigmatic like the other old man had. There was something about this girl –this apparently very talented girl loyal to Roman- that he'd been seeking and had not found.

"What's your name?" Cinder asked the girl, who glanced back at her, clearly unsure of whom she could trust among those present.

"She can't speak," Gray answered for her.

"Then do _you_ know her name?" Cinder asked pointedly.

"Neo," Gray said. "The best-" He seemed like he intended to say more, but stopped himself before he could vocalize another syllable.

Neo. Apparently, someone loyal to Roman Torchwick, and capable of taking on enemies far bigger than herself without hesitation or fear. Disappointment though she was to Gray, that wasn't an asset Cinder wanted to relinquish.

"Mr. Gray, there's no need for this," Cinder suggested. "We're all allies here."

He merely snorted.

Cinder was unused to this. Ever since stealing half of the Fall Maiden's power, she'd been quite used to being the most powerful person in the room and instilling fear and doubt in the others. But this man had killed Ozpin and emerged no worse for the wear, and then defeated Roman Torchwick a day later. His detachment suggested to her Gray didn't have reason to fear any of them.

But why then did he want to draw out this Neo? And why did he expect something different than the girl who stepped in to defend Roman?

Cinder again turned her attention to Neo, breaking down her glass-constructed weapons and approaching the girl unarmed. "Roman is working for me. I have no intention of harming him."

Neo eyed her with suspicion. But Cinder knew how to play this part. Assuming what she recalled was real and not some implanted memory, she had charmed many individuals to get to where she was. She would slowly, carefully establish a rapport. She may not be able to get many secrets out of someone who didn't talk, but Cinder was certain she could gain a modicum of cooperation.

Still, there was a more pressing matter. Cinder refocused her attention to Gray. "So, why have you come here? Just for Neo?"

"Pretty much," Gray admitted. "I wanted to see if attacking her buddy there would draw out the real deal."

"Real deal?" Cinder repeated.

"They could never manage to get her right," Gray explained with lazy ambivalence. "But she's a popular one, so they had to send _something_ out for the paying customers to enjoy."

Neo looked puzzled. Cinder felt a surge of contempt for Gray for his dismissal of this girl, and based on what she'd seen in her dreams, wondered if the same fate promised to her would also befall Neo: to be sold like chattel and _used_ by these sacks of meat.

She buried her hate, trying to focus. "But if you already knew she was flawed… why were you expecting something different?"

Gray finally broke from his detachment and gave a brief flash of a half-smile. "That's what I'm getting in return for my services, little lady. The real thing."

There were others like Neo, just as there had been others like Cinder. And more pressingly, one Gray considered superior to this already talented, fearless warrior. But she was being bartered as some sort of payment?

"I thought you said they couldn't get her right," Cinder inquired, trying to carefully manage her words and tone.

"I didn't say _right_ , I said _real_ ," Gray explained. "The one I'm after is the first one. The failed experiment."

The first one?

Cinder contemplated this. Whatever this man's power, she knew what he wanted. And what he wanted would lead her to a better understanding of this place and its origins.

And then, of course, she would string Gray up and roast him alive for his intentions.

But that wouldn't be today.

"Let's discuss the plan, then," Cinder suggested.

"There's nothing to discuss," Gray told her. "Play whatever games you want."

"Because you'll be playing your own game," Cinder coyly observed.

Gray nodded. "Precisely."

* * *

Wynn finally emerged from his office and deigned to observe the live feed with his technical staff. Many of them were apathetic to it, content to check their social media pages rather than monitor the guests' interactions. They cared so little for the humans present, they had no reason at all to watch the remainders going through their programmed motions. Many of the technical and behavioral staff had been fans of RWBY in their youth, but after seeing a scene play out hundreds of times, they'd understandably shifted their attention.

And that made it so very easy for Wynn to disguise his hand. He logged out of his own admin account and used the only logon data older than his own. When his technicians backtraced who'd made the modifications. Instead of instantly pointing out the culprit, they'd be flummoxed by chasing a ghost hidden in the machine.

Wynn was displeased to see that, while the team arrangements had diverged from the usual canonical pairings, several pairs of partners remained in place. It'd make things difficult to separate, and he did need the teams of student hunters to be in disarray.

Where should he move?

Wynn looked over the teams of the new guests: William Gray and "Dawn Claret". Gray wasn't in the dorm with his teammates, nor had he attended class with them, preferring to wander the grounds by himself, poking holes in the walls and looking for secrets. "Dawn Claret" as she called herself, had immersed in the experience and gone to school in full uniform and played the part of team leader.

Then she broke from the façade and told Weiss Schnee her fate. Wynn found it distasteful, for this guest to bounce back and forth between role playing and spoiling the fun of it all. It was an all-too-common problem with these guests indulging their egos and their awareness, and it seemed even after taking on a new life and name, "Dawn Claret" had the same flaws as the rest of them.

"How unfortunate," Wynn dryly observed to the head of behavior overlooking his techs. "Another indifferent to the consequences of her action. Disappointing, isn't it, Sterling?"

"Doctor…" the man beside him ruefully muttered in his low, barely audible rumble.

"No matter, no matter," Wynn assured, waving him off. "Let them play their games."

 _After all, I mean to play plenty of my own_.

Wynn slowly idled away, putting on the pretense of playing on his pad. He followed surveillance footage, prioritizing Weiss Schnee, who was starting a conversation with Professor Port about her concerns regarding the decision to select someone else as leader over the heiress.

It was supposed to be a defining moment of character growth for her, a step towards her redemption. How unfortunate that fate would take a different turn.

" _With all due respect, your exceptional skill on the battlefield is matched only by your poor attitude."_

" _How dare you!"_

" _My point exactly."_

Weiss was supposed to take the lesson to heart, once she came to terms with her flaws. She would never get the chance to. Wynn would've pitied her if she could've done more in the limited time frame he had.

He hesitated only briefly, and only because he hated to type out a lie. As Port began his explanation, Wynn accessed Weiss's system and typed in a command code: _best girl_.

" _So the outcome did not fall in your favor. Do you really believe that acting in such a manner would cause those in power to reconsider their decision?"_

Port did not see Weiss's eyes glaze over or her gentle swaying cease. He was reading off his script, playing his part like a good puppet.

It made it that much easier for him to be deceived. When Weiss spoke, Port wouldn't see Wynn's lips move.

" _So instead of fretting about what you don't have, savor what you do. Hone your skills. Perfect every technique. And become not the best leader, but the best_ _ **person**_ _you can be."_

Weiss was supposed to use this encouragement and become a better person.

In another life.

"I can't," was all Weiss said, before turning from Port. The professor didn't immediately reply: his programming wasn't designed for this turn of events.

"I can't forgive her," Weiss said, stepping over to the iron bars separating her from a long fall to the courtyard.

"Miss Schnee?" Port inquired, falling back on some secondary subroutine.

Wynn typed in the rest of the new script and logged out.

"I can't… accept…" Weiss said, monotone, as she finished climbing over the barricade… and stepping out onto the empty air and letting herself fall.

Wynn was some distance away, already back on his own account. The technicians hadn't yet noticed what had occurred: they hadn't been watching, and Port was supposed to reminisce at the benches for a while longer. Their only curiosity was why he was reaching over the bars towards the ground.

Until a report came in that Weiss Schnee had suffered critical damage as a result of a fall and needed maintenance. One engineer passed the news on to a neighbor in an adjoining cubicle, and the word slowly spread as they all frantically tried to figure out what had gone wrong.

Wynn was already back in his office when the report reached him. He was already working on the next move of the game, feeding the information to Weiss's father in Atlas through a proxy in RERemnant.

Atlas wasn't supposed to start playing their hand until the second semester, but the death of his heiress would enrage Jacques Schnee. He would blame Beacon for his daughter's death, and send armies to their gates, not to offer security for the upcoming tournament, but to find vengeance for anyone and everyone who had cost him and dishonored his family.

One more player; one more spark for the fire.

It was time to refocus his attention, to shift focus away from the remainders and keep his hand undetected.

And besides, the next move was Neo's to make.


	5. What I Choose It to Mean

**Chapter Five: What I Choose It to Mean**

Pyrrha wasn't sure what to make of her team leader, as he hadn't bothered to attend lectures with them. It was a poor example to set, but one Professors Port and Oobleck had allowed to pass without comment. It was fortunate that Ren believed in the importance of gaining practical knowledge (and according to Nora in Team DRWN was a "perfect student") so she could convince Jaune to join them without fumbling over her words.

Not that Jaune had been hard to convince to get dressed and go to class… Pyrrha just had some trouble talking to him. The first night in their dorm he'd been very accommodating of her, having been used to being sequestered from multiple sisters in tight quarters. Pyrrha had anticipated the living situation –it was an inevitability in seeking to become a huntress- but had been taken aback by Jaune's generosity and willingness to put in extra effort.

Their leader, William Gray, had been completely ambivalent. He selected a bed as his own, then completely ignored all his teammates and told them to do as they wished. He'd said so little Pyrrha had been unsure of what to make of him. The only detail she could infer was that he was a powerful warrior; just as Dawn Claret had destroyed the Nevermore with her punches, so too had Gray annihilated the Deathstalker with a swing of his greatsword, after Pyrrha, Jaune, and Ren struggled against it for several minutes. Ren claimed Gray also easily defeated a King Taijutu the former had been battling, and even after becoming his partner, still progressed on his own, destroying more Grimm with ease… with what Ren described as stoicism to the point of indifference. Given how easy-going and calm Ren was, it seemed Gray was completely detached, even among giant monsters.

Still, eventually, Pyrrha found him showing some initiative. Team CYBR had remained in the amphitheater after Glynda's combat lecture and got some additional sparring in. Yang Xiao Long seemed particularly interested in knocking the confidence out of her leader Cardin Winchester, who seemed to be indoctrinating his teammates in a fighting style that focused on supporting his heavy mace attack. Yang seemed determined to prove _her_ punch was a more powerful finishing blow.

And she did, utterly annihilating both Cardin and Russel in separate bouts. Her sister Ruby and Nora Valkyrie cheered her on, while the quiet girl Blake supported her in a much more subtle manner. Dawn seemed less interested in watching the fight than listening to the spectators' chatter, apparently learning about the other students. Pyrrha could relate: she'd just intended to follow Jaune and learn more about him.

When Gray dragged himself in, he was still wearing the black combat gear he'd worn during initiation and slept in the night before. He came in looking disheveled, like he'd only just made it out of bed, but pointed at Yang and stepped in to the makeshift ring to face her.

"Aw, come on," Yang muttered with a smirk, "I've already beaten up _one_ team leader today."

"How nice for you," Gray replied. "Pity you _can't_ beat me."

"Really?" Yang asked. "You'd be surprised how often guys have told me that."

"Does that mean you accept?" Gray asked her.

Yang smiled. "Nothing better than knocking a jerk down a peg."

Gray shrugged and drew his sword, waiting.

Yang moved in. Gray responded immediately, swinging his sword in a clumsy fashion. Yang should've been able to dodge it easily; Gray had so miscalculated the distance.

Instead she crashed into the flat of his blade, floored. She tried to get back up, but Gray stomped her midsection, taking only a single step forward. Pyrrha looked on in shock as a familiar red tint ran over Yang's body, as her Aura was depleted from two strikes.

" _You can't beat me_ ," Gray reiterated. " _None_ of you can."

The others looked on in surprise. Ruby rushed over to help her sister. When Gray looked down at them, he looked down with contempt- perhaps the first emotion Pyrrha had ever seen from him.

"Is _anyone_ impressed by this farce?" Gray wondered, speaking to no one in particular. "They said this place was incredible. They said it was worth the fortune you'd spend for each day here."

He sheathed his sword and stepped past Yang and Ruby.

"What a waste."

Pyrrha wasn't sure what to make of it. What fortune was he talking about? Beacon was funded by the populace, like every other huntsman academy. Why would Gray need to pay anything? And why was he so dissatisfied?

Gray pointed at Pyrrha. "You. Invincible girl."

She had a sneaking suspicion she knew his intention, but Pyrrha feigned confusion nonetheless. "I'm… not invincible…"

"Whatever," Gray dismissed. "Fight me."

"I-uh, I don't think that's a good idea," Pyrrha tried to beg off, to not indulge him. Where before she couldn't get a read on her leader, now the more she was learning about him the less she liked. He didn't respect his classmates, so why should his teammates be any different?

"Consider it an order from your team leader," Gray told her. "To fight me and try to defeat me."

Pyrrha was starting to understand Yang's frustration with Cardin as her leader. Knocking him down a peg wouldn't just make Pyrrha happy; it'd be good to dampen his ego and would probably improve their team's unit cohesion if he was humbled and reminded he was working with a group of peers.

"Pyrrha-" Jaune began beside her, but Pyrrha wordlessly silenced him. She appreciated the concern –more than she ever expected to appreciate anyone's act of kindness- but she saw enough positives to try this.

"Of course, if that's what you wish," Pyrrha agreed. It didn't matter how strong he was if his sword was made of metal. He'd never be able to touch her.

Pyrrha had only needed a moment to change from the school uniform back into combat gear. On her way back into the amphitheater, she saw Dawn Claret speaking to Gray, chastising him while her teammates helped Yang to a seat outside the ring. She couldn't make out what the two were talking about, but Gray clearly was in no mood to indulge her. As Pyrrha drew closer, some of their words became clearer…

"-and what, you need to beat up your own teammates now?" Dawn asked him.

"Is it any different from you getting them to pat you on the back?" Gray inquired back. "You think you're here for a different reason than I am. Maybe you think you're a better person than I am. You're not."

Gray stepped past her, fixing his attention on Pyrrha. "We're both just playing with toys. The difference is I'm not pretending there's anything more to it than that."

Dawn didn't seem to have a good response to that, and reluctantly shuffled out of the ring, joining the others in tending to Yang, while Ren and Jaune sat up close to watch the battle. No doubt they too wanted to see her triumph over Gray, and the quiet Blake Belladonna encouraged her with a smile.

Pyrrha assumed a defensive stance, keeping her shield up. Gray seemed irritated she was waiting for _him_ to press the attack, but he did eventually comply, slowly staggering towards her with his heavy blade resting on his shoulder.

She waited patiently for his swing, so she could judge its distance and subtly match her body motion with the activation of her Semblance. She had hoped she'd eventually be able to confide her secret in her teammates –her _friends_ \- but now that possibility seemed remote. She'd have to defeat Gray today, and pretend she'd simply outperformed him for a very long time.

When Gray finally attacked, it was simplicity itself for Pyrrha to deflect his clumsy swing. For someone so strong, he had no technique. He was like Jaune if Jaune were a detached, arrogant jerk.

Gray was undeterred and swung again, and this time Pyrrha allowed his blow to strike her shield rather than dodge or parry. His force drove her back, her feet skidding along the wooden floor.

Pyrrha moved in, looking for an opening. After Gray swung again, Pyrrha gently raised her shield and discretely re-directed the path of his sword so the two barely interacted, and then the "invincible" girl from Mistral moved in to press the attack. She didn't want to injure him, just knock off enough of his Aura to show how outclassed he was.

But as she drew closer, Pyrrha felt… sluggish. She was moving so slowly Gray would have ample time to counterattack, and her body wasn't obeying her commands to fight. Pyrrha could do little more than wait for her opponent to capitalize, and she felt she was driving her spear through a sea of invisible molasses.

And yet… Gray _didn't_ counterattack. He stood still, letting Pyrrha continue her pointlessly slow offensive. Her body was already moving at a crawl; now she was barely moving at all. She kept trying to will herself to attack, to finish the motion she'd performed hundreds of times –in practice and in battle- and her arm wouldn't obey her brain's command.

Was it some kind of Semblance she'd never encountered nor heard of? Was Gray creating an illusion she couldn't pierce? Was he surrounded by some kind of time dilation field? Or worse- was he somehow controlling her motions?

Gray sighed and reached his free hand to her forehead. He didn't even attack; he just lazily waved his arm, and tapped her forehead with his index finger. Pyrrha skidded back along the floor again, feeling her Aura disrupt. A quick glance down at her Scroll showed he'd knocked off more than a third- by _poking_ her.

"Even you can't hit me, magnet girl," Gray mused. He knew? And he spoke loudly enough Jaune and Ren almost certainly heard him…

Pyrrha resumed her defensive stance. She would not yield; that would only further strengthen and justify his arrogance. But there was something about him that was preventing her attack, and until she was rid of that disadvantage, her determination would be little more than a consolation prize after she was dealt her first defeat in front of a group of her peers.

But Gray didn't seem interested in humiliating her. What limited emotion he could convey seemed limited to frustration and disappointment. He waited for her to attack, and Pyrrha tried again, only to feel the exact same delayed reaction time, the thrust of Miló so slow Gray barely had to side step it. Pyrrha drew back and transformed her weapon from pilum to rifle, trying to attack at range.

Gray perked up at the sight, waiting patiently for her to fire. Pyrrha saw him clearly in her crosshairs, but couldn't make her finger pull the trigger. She tried again and again, but for whatever reason she could not will herself to fire.

Her team leader picked up on it quickly. "Maybe you should try your Semblance," Gray dryly observed.

That would be logical, but Pyrrha wasn't sure she should reveal that trick in her arsenal. And besides, there didn't seem to be much point…

Gray scoffed and lowered his sword. "This is a waste of my time."

He attempted to walk out of the arena. "Wait," Pyrrha called to him, "Why did you do this if you didn't intend to fight?"

"What point is there to a fight you can't lose?" Gray countered. "I'd feel more tension playing a video game." He continued his departure. "What a disappointment."

Pyrrha watched him go, then glanced at the others spectating. Ren seemed to have inferred about her power, though Jaune just looked confused. Ruby Rose was tending to her sister, who was only just beginning to regain her composure. Dawn Claret looked furious, even more so than Yang's actual teammates.

Pyrrha awkwardly exited the arena, joining her two teammates. Jaune looked at the back of Gray's retreating head and asked: "Um, should we do anything?"

"Do what you want," Gray coldly replied. "I'm done with you."

Dawn stepped past them, dashing to catch up. Pyrrha turned her attention to Ren, who leaned over and quietly told her: "If you don't want me to tell the others, I won't."

They'd known each other for a day, but Pyrrha sensed she could trust him. They'd fought together briefly against the Deathstalker and he'd provided unwavering support and stable suppression fire. He'd been polite and respectful in accommodating her in the dorm room. She also couldn't help but feel that, for whatever reason, he would complement her well as a teammate, though she could not explain how she'd reached that conclusion.

Jaune reached over to examine her forehead. Pyrrha tried to maintain composure and not give away any signs of his presence affecting her… because that genuine concern coupled with a gentle touch from a nice farm boy was making her far more uncomfortable than the head wound.

Her inability to attack Gray still concerned her. She didn't know what to make of it all, and her instincts were telling her it was unimportant. But _that_ thought concerned her too… why would she be indifferent to being completely unable to attack an opponent? Why _wouldn't_ she try to understand why there was something she could not do?

And of course, the dreams she'd been having lately… the girl Neo, the man in the recordings, the murder… there was something wrong with all of this. Things were _not_ as they were supposed to be… but Pyrrha could not tell why she expected things to be different. Things just seemed… off.

She saw Dawn trying to speak to Gray at the edge of the amphitheater. Subtly, purposely, Pyrrha reluctantly left Jaune and edged her way closer. It wasn't particularly nice to eavesdrop, but for some reason…

"-I asked you before to leave me alone," Gray told her bluntly. "I didn't make a point of messing up your happy little team."

"Yeah, but you still tipped them off about this place," Dawn rebuked. "Why did you even join a team here if you weren't going to work with them?"

"I wanted to sample everything," Gray replied matter-of-factly. "This… this didn't take."

"So, what, you just up and leave 'cause things didn't go your way?" Dawn asked him.

"Pretty much," Gray answered. "Vacation has sucked so far. I'm going to try looking outside the hotel."

What were they saying? Why would Dawn care if Gray "tipped them off?" What did that even mean? And why did Gray refer to his stay at Beacon as a "vacation?"

And why were her own thoughts telling her this was innocuous and unimportant, when it seemed like these two knew something she clearly didn't?

"Go and play your games," Gray told Dawn. "I'll see if the bad guys are more fun to play with."

 _Bad guys?_ Gray knew about some criminal element and hadn't reported it to proper authorities? Or was he just being colorful in his invective?

"Why bother?" Dawn asked. "It's not like Cinder or Roman or anybody will be any different. You're not _supposed_ to lose to them; you're supposed to have fun!"

Gray sighed. "No one's stopping you doing your thing, girl. Have fun going to class and getting your ass kissed by the robots. That isn't what I came here to do." He resumed his steady departure. Dawn huffed, but did not pursue him further and headed back.

Dawn seemed more friendly and approachable, and seemed to have a better handle on things than she let on. Despite her instincts now screeching at her to let the issue lie, Pyrrha drew nearer and prepared to start a careful conversation…

"Miss Claret."

Professor Port stepped in, drawing both girls' attention. He stepped over to Dawn, looking somber; a far cry from the bombast he'd shown in the classroom.

"I need to talk to you about your teammate, Miss Schnee."

* * *

Cinder had rarely felt so vulnerable, even surrounded by allies. Once Cinder helped move Roman to a comfortable resting position, his associate Neo had started to warm to her. As near as Cinder could tell the short girl couldn't speak at all, and she betrayed no emotion, masking her every thought with a smirk. The only thing Cinder seemed sure of was that she was protective of Roman, and that instinct seemed to vanish from her once Roman stirred and departed back to business, leaving his associate at Cinder's request.

The girl did not fear her, and Cinder did not get the sense she obeyed Roman out of fear either. If anything, this girl Neo seemed _more_ skilled than Roman. Cinder wondered how she'd compare to Emerald and Mercury.

And to Gray, for that matter, who was so unconcerned being around them he was dozing off in the corner. It was only natural for an old man to squeeze in a nap, but his lack of fear in their presence was so brazen as to be disrespectful. Had she met the old man yesterday, she'd have humored him once, then killed him for his second bout of insolence.

Today, however, she knew that he was from another place, a world beyond the one she knew, with influence over her own. He may not have been one of her creators –for all Cinder knew he was just a visitor with no more power or control over things than Cinder herself had- but he knew things she didn't, and accomplished in a day what she'd spent months planning.

Cinder turned her attention back to Neo. What made her so special, that Gray sought her out? What made her so special that the old men making them tried to make her again when they didn't get her right the first time? How did one fail in trying to create a person? How could someone as powerful as this girl be considered a failure?

"Gray," Cinder called to the old man, "When did you encounter this other Neo?"

This drew Neo's attention. She glanced between Cinder and Gray, listening intently.

"Thirty-one years ago, when this place opened," Gray answered, still propped up against the wall. "I was looking for a good fight, and no one could give me one. 'Til I heard that there were two remainders the makers of this place screwed up."

Two? Remainders?

Cinder took the latter first, as she'd heard the word in her dreams before. "Remainders?"

"A pet name for you," Gray explained. "They thought they were being clever."

"Go on," Cinder requested, Neo looking on in confusion.

"Once we finally learned why this place was called 'Remnant', and where you all came from," Gray continued, "they had a name for you. You're all the leftovers of an unbalanced equation… and engineers do love their math jokes."

"And when did you learn all this?" Cinder asked, trying not to betray too much anticipation.

"We got a pretty big clue in Volume 4," Gray shrugged. "Think they filled us in on the rest in Volume 7. Or 8."

His answers weren't giving her a satisfactory explanation, so Cinder moved on. "And the other one like Neo?"

Gray finally reacted to that. "There _are_ no others like Neo."

Neo inclined her head in a quizzical tilt, glancing back at Cinder, briefly holding her gaze. Cinder focused her attention on Gray. "No, I mean… there was another failure besides Neo?"

Gray huffed. "Not a failure. It all came down to those neat tricks you can do. You try and replicate a Semblance, sometimes the worst thing you can do is get it _right_."

"You're so insistent…" Cinder muttered.

"When I choose a word, it means what I choose it to mean," Gray snorted. "Neither more, nor less."

Cinder was in no hurry to argue semantics, but it seemed Gray was particular in his wording. So she tried being more direct. "Who?"

"Doesn't matter," Gray dismissed. "Hasn't mattered for a long time."

"And yet Neo obviously matters to you," Cinder interjected, the short girl beside her still looking quite lost. "Why?"

Gray pointed up at his cheek. "None of you can hurt me. No matter how hard you fight, or how powerful you are in here, you can't defeat me and never will."

He looked at Neo, taking in her features. Fearless though she was, the short girl seemed uncomfortable with this old man leering at her. "But she _did_ manage to hurt me. Because she was broken, or imperfect, or abandoned… because unlike the rest of you parading around this zoo, she was the only one of you who was _real_."

This seemed to contradict what Cinder heard in her dreams, and what she'd seen firsthand in tearing off her own skin. "Real?"

"People come here for different reasons," Gray mused. "Because they want to screw one of you, because they want to pretend to be a hero, or because they want to be the coolest kid in high school all over again. But in the end they all want the same thing: to escape from the life they have out there."

"There is no escape here," Cinder scoffed. "How can your world be worse than this one?"

"Because in my world people don't fight for their lives with swords and guns; they haven't had to for hundreds of years," Gray went on. "They survive with money, and they fight with it, trading it away, risking it in ventures, or hoarding it under their mattress and saving it for a bad day. Most people have just enough to get by… but the people who come here are loaded with it."

"And how is that worse than here?" Cinder inquired.

"Thing about money, is it's a poison," Gray explained. "But it's a sweet poison, so we dip our cup in and never stop. And once you've got enough to afford coming to a place like this for your summer vacation, you've already seen everything there is to see back home. You've conquered the world, but instead of sitting on a throne, you sit at a table with a bunch of others just as rich as you are and slowly kill yourself with every vice you can. I got tired of waiting to die- I thought I'd do the deed myself."

Cinder couldn't comprehend that. She understood boredom, she understood ambition, but she didn't understand why this apparently wealthy, powerful man would want to end his reign and his life. "You're seeking death?"

"I'm seeking _life_ ," Gray countered. "Because for thirty-one years, I've had all the money in the world, all the power, and I haven't felt as alive as I did the day a girl with an umbrella gave me a scar." He finally lifted up, dusting himself off as he stood. "Maybe I was just born in the wrong time."

"And after you find this 'real' Neo, what then?" Cinder asked.

"One of us will still be here," Gray answered simply.

Now Cinder was truly interested. If this girl could defeat the man who killed Ozpin –and she was outside the control of the 'puppet masters' in her dreams- then an alliance with her could be just what Cinder needed to be free of her promised fate.

"And what of your world? Will you return to it?" Cinder asked.

"I already did everything I could there," Gray answered. "Made my fortune, built my empire, married my trophy wife, knocked her up, let the internet raise my boy, and now all that's left is to grow older and count the numbers in my accounts. I told them both before I left- this is where I'll be now. There's nothing waiting back there I need anymore."

It was remarkably callous to abandon his family like that. Cinder briefly wondered if she'd have been capable of chasing her ambition if she'd had a family waiting for her… then remembered that those vague recollections of her past were every bit as false as the skin she wore over a metal frame. The important detail was that no one would come looking for this man once he was gone; he fully _expected_ to die in this place.

Cinder would see that he got his wish… once she saw firsthand this failure he so obsessed over.

* * *

Glynda's Scroll would not stop notifying her of new messages. Jacques Schnee was furious, announcing his intention to arrive immediately, demanding an investigation, and most pressingly, demanding to speak with Ozpin. James was trying to reach her too, for the same reason: apparently Ozpin had missed a scheduled meeting with the Council and they were becoming concerned by his absence. When Jacques told him about Weiss Schnee's suicide, James added that he was being pressured by the Atlas council to accompany Jacques and other Schnee Dust Company representatives to Beacon, and really would like to speak with Ozpin.

Normally Glynda allowed the headmaster his space, but he'd been completely absent for initiation, and had sent no new directives. He hadn't announced any sort of temporary leave, and none of the other teachers mentioned seeing him at any staff meetings. Finally, perhaps a few hours later than she should have, Glynda finally took the elevator up to his office to inquire about his absence, hoping there weren't any bigger problems than the SDC about to kick in the front door.

Seeing Ozpin's dead body against the wall of his office put paid to that idea.

Glynda got on her Scroll. "All teachers report to the Headmaster's office," Glynda instructed. "We're setting up emergency protocols effective immediately."

* * *

After classes, Pyrrha found herself walking the courtyard with Jaune, while Ren offered to help Nora after learning of the sudden death of her teammate. Ren had apparently known Nora for years and was easily able to calm and comfort her. Pyrrha wondered if perhaps Nora should've been on their team instead; she seemed much more agreeable than Gray.

For now, however, it fell to her to try and talk Jaune through the matter. Jaune had expressed an interest in Weiss, possibly even a romantic interest. While that hadn't exactly pleased Pyrrha to witness, she had never wished the other girl any harm. So she walked to Jaune, listening him recount the day in the forest, when he'd tried to impress her by catching her out of midair, only to make a fool of himself. He took some pride in at least breaking her fall, even if she'd nearly broken his back landing on him. Now she was gone, and she'd never get a chance to see him do better.

It continued to amaze Pyrrha how Jaune endeared himself to her. Many of the others had impressed her with their honesty and their drive, but Jaune, despite putting on an unbecoming tough guy act and clearly trying to cover up his lack of real combat experience, was more _genuine_ than any of the others, save possibly Ruby, and only because she was younger and a bit more naïve. Pyrrha had chosen him as her partner because unlike Weiss, Jaune had treated her like he treated anyone else, and sought friendship without an expectation that hanging with the Mistral Regional Champion would improve his social standing or advance his career as a huntsman. She was grateful she could be his friend in this moment, and whatever Weiss's flaws, she would help Jaune in mourning her.

Or so she expected.

"Pyrrha Nikos."

Gray stepped towards her and Jaune. "Come with me."

Pyrrha glanced back at Jaune, adjusting her position a little bit to stand between the two boys, instinctively moving to protect the blonde farm boy. "Why? I thought you were done with us."

"So did I," Gray replied. "But it turns out there's something about you worth paying attention to."

"Did you actually learn something from our sparring session?" Pyrrha asked, trying not to mock him, but not completely able to conceal her distaste.

"No," Gray told her flatly. "I sent some cash to one of the techs here, and he told me where I could find the fight I was looking for. There are some stories about this place… including one about the owners playing favorites."

"Favorites?" Pyrrha repeated.

"That's the thing about this series," Gray mused. "Everyone had their favorite girl. One of the guys who built this place liked you best of all, and made you special."

Gray tapped on his Scroll. "The other… liked Neo best of all." He pointed the device at her, showing her a picture of the familiar girl.

Neo, the girl who could travel into Pyrrha's dreams. "You're… going after her?" Pyrrha wondered.

"Yep," Gray answered simply. "Can't think of anything better to do here."

Did he know that Pyrrha had met Neo before? Was that why he was bringing her along? No, he'd mentioned a different reason. "And what is it that makes me 'special'?"

Gray shrugged. "I don't know. But I don't want to sit through three volumes of plot before things get anywhere. The tech told me you could find something called the Spirit Temple, and at least that wasn't a plot I'd heard before."

Pyrrha had read the words in the vault hidden under the tree in the Emerald Forest. "And did this… person tell you what the Spirit Temple was?"

"He didn't know," Gray answered. "He just said you were the only one who could find it, because you're the only one who knows how to get there."

But she _didn't_ know. Why would someone say that she did?

Neo had shown her a message. She'd changed her eye to a consistent purple color, and kept tapping it.

 _One with the eye of truth will be shown the way to the Spirit Temple…_

The eye of truth. Was that what Neo had wanted her to see? And if so, why? What was the Spirit Temple? Or the eye of truth for that matter?

Just as her instincts had told her not to be concerned about being unable to harm Gray in battle, they now told her these words were trivial and unimportant; a distraction from her studies and her training. And of course, the first thing she'd seen when Neo had led her on was a video of her murdering a man.

Did she want to know?

Perhaps not.

Alarms drew their attention. Jaune searched frantically for the source as the tower above them flared with blazing light. Something was wrong… people might be in danger, might need her help.

Gray noticed her trepidation. "It seems you have to decide. I won't force your hand."

There was no good reason to follow him on this fool's errand. Whatever Neo was trying to tell her, it was much less important than whatever emergency Beacon was going through. Jaune needed her support right now, and how could she abandon anyone in their hour of need?

She hadn't trusted her instincts before, because they felt off. Because somehow, something was wrong with her, and with a few prominent exceptions, things seemed to be wrong with her time at Beacon too.

And wherever that path led, whatever was waiting at the bottom of the well, whatever the eye of truth was, whatever the Spirit Temple was, whatever Neo's intentions were… that was where her instincts told her to avoid, and she no longer trusted her own instincts.

Save for one.

"I'll come with you on one condition," Pyrrha told Gray, speaking up to be heard over the rising sound of alarms emanating from the tower. "That Jaune be allowed to accompany us."

Gray shrugged. "Whatever."

Pyrrha turned to Jaune, who looked on, concerned. "Pyrrha…"

"I don't know why I'm doing this," Pyrrha quietly admitted to him. "But this girl… I've seen her before, and she's trying to tell me something important."

She hadn't wanted to burden Jaune with her problems when he was already dealing with his own. But she didn't want to leave him behind to deal with his guilt without her. And she didn't want to wander into the unknown without him.

"What about Gray?" Jaune asked her.

"I don't know what games he's playing," Pyrrha acknowledged. "But for the moment, he wants to go to the same place I do. And I have to know why these things are happening to me."

"What about Beacon?" Jaune asked.

"Beacon can manage without three first year students," Pyrrha assured him.

"Four," Jaune uttered quietly. Pyrrha looked away.

After several seconds, he nodded. "Okay," Jaune agreed. "I'll go with you."

"Exquisite," Gray deadpanned. "Well, come on, then, team… let's go see if the guy I bribed was honest about defective hardware."

That wasn't quite how Pyrrha would have worded it, but the sentiment was correct. She tapped on her Scroll, and then Jaune's. Amidst the blaring lights and screeching alarms, she doubted anyone would notice a pair of equipment lockers rocketing down to the courtyard, landing before the partners.

"And once we get there, Gray, what will you do?" Pyrrha asked, opening her locker and withdrawing her weapons.

"I'm just looking to see something I've never seen before," Gray answered. "And it sounds like you're looking to see your old friend again."

"I just want to know why this is happening," Pyrrha replied. "I just want to know _why_."

"I can't think of a better reason to rush out into the unknown," Gray agreed, turning from them and heading out of the courtyard. Pyrrha glanced back at Jaune as he pulled on his armor, giving her another concerned look.

Reluctantly, Pyrrha armored up and headed away, leaving behind the school she'd sought to attend and possibly forsaking the career she'd spent her life preparing for… to know the meaning of some cryptic words left behind by a mute girl and a dead man.

At least Jaune was with her.

Maybe that was what the dead man had meant, when he'd told her not to think in a linear fashion. By most standards, this was an act of regression; an abandonment of her dreams, possibly even a dereliction of duty. Maybe there was something in this misadventure that was important enough to ignore her instincts and her obligation.

Maybe this eye of truth was what she needed to move forward.


	6. Six Impossible Things Before Breakfast

**Chapter Six: Six Impossible Things Before Breakfast**

When Port explained to her what happened to Weiss, Dawn had no immediate reaction. She didn't process the information properly, and didn't realize what he'd said. Upon the repeat, however…

Was it because of what she'd said? Had her bringing up a future character arc triggered something in the robot that prompted it to induce its own demise?

Dawn thought it would hurt more than it did, but she didn't feel guilt or pain- she wondered whether this would simply be reversed; if this incarnation of Weiss Schnee would be repaired and rebooted and rejoin her team the following morning and none of the remainders would remember the suffering and anguish. Or if Weiss was gone for the rest of her vacation, would she get a new teammate to fill the ranks?

And should it bother her that she was less concerned about Weiss's death than how it would affect her vacation?

Port was summoned away by a message on his Scroll, leaving Dawn alone with her thoughts, though not for long. Ruby and Nora soon came over to inquire what had happened. Dawn wasn't sure where to begin, or how to explain it. Had anyone in Remnant ever committed suicide before this? In a way that didn't involve heroically sacrificing oneself, anyway?

Ruby was supposed to go on to develop a close friendship with Weiss that would develop into the deepest character bond depicted in the series. At this time in canon, she was still a creature of pure innocence. Would she comprehend what had happened? Surely at some point in the park's history someone else had screwed up worse than this.

But that didn't absolve her. If anything, Dawn felt worse from trying to rationalize her thoughts. She came to RERemnant to immerse herself in the world, and on day two she screwed things up by dismissing Weiss's important character growth. And more damningly, her first reaction had been indifference.

Maybe there was an answer to both her concerns; to alleviate her guilt and restore the sense of purpose that had initially guided her on this journey. Maybe by doing better by the remaining two she could restore what she felt had been lost.

It was easy to play a part when the feeling was quite genuine. "It's because of me…"

* * *

The technicians were all furiously exchanging memos, trying to understand what had happened. Beaumont intervened and calmed them down as best he could, but many of them were quite justifiably concerned that they couldn't trace where the command line had come from. To those with greater network privileges, however… well, that was an even bigger concern, because it certainly looked like a dead man had just decided to write a new line of code in his creations.

Beaumont issued a department-wide instruction to bring the subject in for examination and to try and prevent word from leaking out to the board or any other relevant investors. By the time he'd left the cubicle farm and reached the elevator to head up to Wynn's office, he'd already received a message from the board of directors demanding an explanation. It seemed some other tech had decided to get the credit for informing the bosses before Beaumont could compose a proper, detailed report… he'd just have to give them something more palatable to remain in their good graces.

Fortunately, it was starting to look to him like all this chaos and confusion was just a ruse… a much more important adjustment had been made beforehand… in fact, made _right before_ a bunch of production models had been set ablaze, and made to their template.

Wynn was sitting behind his desk, playing with his tablet. It took several seconds of Beaumont standing in his doorway before he deigned to acknowledge his subordinate. "What is it now?"

"Sir, there's something I wanted to discuss with you," Beaumont told him. "Or, more specifically… something I'd like to discuss with _Sterling_."

Wynn didn't even look up from his tablet. "You sound just like him, you know."

"You've mentioned that, sir," Beaumont nodded. "But the matter at hand…"

"Yes, yes, there's a problem," Wynn agreed, still not bothering to crane up his head. "Why should it matter? This is the last adventure our guests will ever go on; so much the better things should play out differently."

"Sir, there is the matter of how Sterling was able to override one of our remainders… despite having been dead for thirty-one years," Beaumont dryly remarked.

"Dead men make posthumous achievements all the time," Wynn dismissed. "The truly great men continue to change the world left behind long after they've turned to ash."

"Do you know something you're not telling me, sir?" Beaumont inquired.

"Of course," Wynn confirmed. "No matter how much you may want to be, you're not a player in this game, Beaumont. You chose your side, and agreed to be the board's pawn."

"I have never-" Beaumont began.

"Do not presume to lie to me," Wynn interjected, still not looking up from his tablet. "Lie to yourself, lie to your subordinates, but never assume anything you do is beneath my notice. Do not confuse ambivalence with ignorance."

Beaumont saw no more reason to pretend. "They'll tell me to shut you down, Ed."

"Of course they will," Wynn agreed. "And when they do, you'll find a reason not to."

"You really think they'll believe a dead man's the one causing them problems?" Beaumont demanded.

"I think they'll believe it when they see his agent is actively manipulating these events, just as I am," Wynn coolly replied. "It doesn't matter that Sterling's dead- his work far outlasts him. That was the whole point of this place; that it'd be the legacy that we'd both get to leave behind.

"Instead, I am burdened with the fact that RERemnant will die before I do, and my legacy will be nothing but a failed experiment," Wynn continued, the emotion in his voice finally flaring up and outward. "I can think of no fate worse than to live to bury your child, or for an old man to die knowing he accomplished nothing at all."

Beaumont was speechless, but composed himself. It wasn't a complete admission of guilt, and Wynn making some cryptic, musing statement was every bit as common as his subordinates in behavior sending a memo about the latest bug report. He pressed on. "You can't win this, Edward. They've already made up their mind."

"And that is precisely why I've taken this step," Wynn countered. "Because when faced with extinction, every alternative is preferable. Make no mistake, Beaumont- when this game is over, there may be more than one of us left… but only one of us will be standing."

He stood up from his desk. "I'm sure your masters will be calling," Wynn dryly observed. "Feel free to take your time; it's not like there's any work left for you to do."

"Sir," Beaumont began as Wynn headed away. "What are you going to do?"

"It's not my turn to move," Wynn coyly replied. "It's _her_ 's."

* * *

Gray looked at his Scroll, abruptly standing up, immediately drawing Cinder's attention. "Looks like Beacon finally noticed what I did to Ozpin."

"It took them this long?" Cinder inquired, genuinely surprised. She figured even if things had gone off-script for the machines, they'd have been faster to react to the death of their leader.

"They've locked down the academy in response," Gray noted, showing Cinder footage on his Scroll. "May make things difficult for your plan to get to the Fall Maiden."

Cinder's eyes widened. "How did y-?"

"I've been playing this game a long time," Gray explained. "The first time I saw you break in, I was as young as you're supposed to be."

That gave Cinder pause. The memories she thought had been her life now seemed very vague and incomplete. There was little more than the important details: her pact with Salem, her recruitment of her minions, her attack on the Fall Maiden and the burning hunger in her soul…

"And how did it end?" Cinder asked him.

"You got what you wanted, and you stole Amber's powers," Gray answered. "And then I killed you."

Cinder glared at him. "Really."

"I was a dumb kid," Gray mused. "Felt like such a hero, saving Beacon from the villain. Took a damn selfie with your corpse and thought I was just the coolest guy who ever lived." His words were laced with regret. He wasn't boasting of superiority; he was waxing philosophical on time wasted. "I ran through the season finale seven or eight times before I figured I should try something else."

"Season finale?" Cinder repeated, ignoring the thought she was listening to babbling nonsense.

"Yeah, that isn't supposed to happen yet," Gray told her. "Most of the people who come here want to play through the same events as they happened in the show. They just want to be there to save the day at the end, and then hook up with whatever best- whatever girl they liked to celebrate."

Cinder sighed. "How typical."

"I got tired of playing the hero," Gray continued, looking over at Neo, still standing silent. "Instead, I tried poking as many holes in this place as I could, looking for something different."

"Killing the villain lost its luster?" Cinder mocked.

"There's no point in fighting a battle you can't lose," Gray replied. "Trust me, I'm rich. It is possible to get tired of certainty."

The concept was alien to Cinder, who had once meticulously planned attacks and infiltration in pursuit of her goal to mitigate the possibility of failure. Still, she did understand incongruity. She had not wanted to live the same monotonous life of an 'ordinary' person, not even logical things like to be loved by the populace. She had entered a life of lonely struggle, surrounded by thieves and murderers and in the midst of soulless monsters instead of finding someone to love and share her life with. Her reward for her sacrifices was pain, a constant, burning hunger within her that she could not sate.

And the end of her journey, it seemed… was to be defeated by whoever wanted to play a hero because he was bored of being rich and comfortable. It was hard to envision a more ignominious and unworthy end.

Cinder again fixated on Neo. Some incarnation of this girl had been able to play outside of her expected role. Cinder glanced around the room to her minions… to Mercury, patiently waiting, to Emerald…

…to Emerald…

"Where has Emerald gone?" Cinder inquired.

Mercury shrugged. "She was here a minute ago."

"She casts illusions, boy," Gray pointed out. "She could've been gone a lot longer than you think."

* * *

Pyrrha glanced around the exterior of the bookstore, eyeing the Faunus owner inside mulling over books. "This doesn't seem like a seedy part of town?"

"How little you know," Gray rebuked. "This is the site of a murder."

"Murder?" Jaune repeated. "When did that happen?"

"Next semester," Gray replied. "And here's the murderer now."

She emerged from the alley left of the entrance of Tukson's Book Trade, poking out her green mane. "You didn't mention you were bringing friends."

"They're teammates," Gray answered dismissively. "Couldn't get rid of them."

"You _asked_ me to accompany you," Pyrrha interjected.

Gray smirked. "Forgive this one: she's honest. So's the farmboy."

Emerald emerged from the alley. She fixated on Pyrrha, staring so long the girl from Mistral started to get a bit uncomfortable. "Why are honest people helping you?"

"They're looking for answers, just like I am," Gray justified. "Do you have any to offer?"

"Our mutual friend gave me a piece of information for you," Emerald confirmed, composing herself. "Didn't make any sense to me, but he said you could figure it out."

"Go on," Gray requested.

Emerald pointed at Pyrrha. "Go to where she made her first kill, and you'll find what you're looking for."

Pyrrha's face turned pale. Gray glanced back at her. "Did our friend mention how I can get there?"

Emerald pulled out her Scroll, and Gray did the same. A few taps of a button later, Gray examined the coordinates. "And can I raise it?"

"If not, Atlas will open it for you," Emerald promised.

"Yes… our dear Pyrrha's victim is on the way," Gray agreed. "How typical they'd feel the need to shoehorn that in…"

"I've given you what you were promised," Emerald pointed out.

"Yes, yes, you have," Gray confirmed, more interested in Pyrrha's stunned silence than his green-haired informant. "And have you been paid?"

"My job's not done," Emerald coolly answered.

Gray nodded. "I won't keep you."

Emerald stepped back into the alley, leaving the three behind. Gray turned his attention to Pyrrha, merely looking on. Jaune moved to her side, placing a comforting hand on her shoulder. "Are you okay?"

"She's not doing well at all," Gray suggested. "It's not every day you learn you're destined to kill someone."

Pyrrha was broken from her stupor by his word choice. "Destined…?"

"You do go on about destiny," Gray observed. "Maybe it'd be more accurate to say that's what you're _supposed_ to do, canonically."

"Supposed to do?" Pyrrha repeated.

Slowly, Gray began to infer. "Well, how interesting. In this playthrough, you've _already_ killed someone."

"Come on, Gray," Jaune interjected. "This is Pyrrha we're talking about. That's impossible!"

"That's the thing about your series," Gray mused. "They made a theme park about it. People come here to experience the impossible. Enough time immersed in here… and they've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast."

Gray leaned in close, so uncomfortably close he startled Pyrrha out of her reverie. "Who did you kill?"

"I didn't… I don't…" Pyrrha searched for justification. She didn't want Jaune to hear this. She didn't want to recall it. She didn't want to try and confide in this man she didn't trust.

"Well, if you won't tell me who you've already killed," Gray abruptly moved on. "Would you like to know who you're _going_ to kill?"

"Stop it," Jaune intervened again. "Pyrrha's not like that."

"No, she's not," Gray agreed. "But circumstances will conspire to change her nature, and she'll play the part."

"Why did we even come out here?" Jaune demanded, somewhere between trying to defend Pyrrha and lashing out with his own emotions. "What did that girl give you that was so important?"

Gray held up his Scroll, tapping on it to create a holographic projection, of a floating structure with crystals protruding from beneath it: the Amity Colosseum of the Vytal Festival Tournament.

"Another future murder site," Gray explained. "And, as it happens, somewhere the girl we're looking for will end up playing an important role…"

* * *

There was no Atlas across the sea; just a hangar devoted to their armada of ships and a few staged sets for filling in the characters' cornerstones in their backstories. The guests hoped they could travel to Atlas (or the other two kingdoms) someday, but for thirty years they'd been content with only Sanus as a setting.

Still, certain events triggered a response in the Atlas citizenry. The death of the heiress to the SDC would logically provoke a response from her father and her countrymen, and so they were activated and sent to Vale, coming to their semblance of sentience mid-journey and letting the program guide them.

Beaumont's staff had been caught off guard by Weiss Schnee's suicide, and sought to find the source of it. Many of them were distracted by their pending obsolescence. None of them had stopped to think about a secondary response in that moment.

Nor had they any reason to intervene when the Amity Colosseum moved to accompany the Atlas ships, as it was programmed to join them in the simulation of the Vytal Festival. It'd float over and hover over Beacon, even without its participants flocking to it, alongside the Atlas armada.

Beaumont showed the board the footage of the vehicles departing, broadcasting it to all their various smart devices. He'd considered showing them the lines of code that had prompted some of these occurrences, but he suspected that'd only sour their mood further. Instead, he limited the technical data to the identity of the administrator logon.

"It's Wynn," the spokesman insisted. "He's just trying to conceal his hand in this."

"I agree that's more likely than Sterling returning from the dead," Beaumont confirmed. "But I can't prove it. Without administrative privileges, all I can do is point at it and give you the timeline."

"Well, what _can_ you do?" barked one of the board members seated behind their spokesman. "The deployment of the Atlas ships is going to cost hundreds of thousands. This whole week was already an exorbitant cost for the guest population, and now we've exceeded that budget, _and_ have to recalibrate equipment, _and_ have to backlog several orders for production models."

"We moved ahead with the schedule," Beaumont pointed out, before coolly adding: "Most of my staff wasn't aware of your plan to lay them off."

The spokesman quickly intervened. "Be that as it may, we gave Wynn allowances, and he has exceeded them. If he won't work within our confines, then he needs to stop before he causes any more damage. We can eat the current expenses, but we will not allow any more."

"There's going to be more," Beaumont assured him. "We'll have to hard wipe several of the park models of the experience, and Weiss Schnee will have to be completely reworked, and I'm sure that she's a popular option in your catalog."

"You need to tell Wynn to stop this," the spokesman instructed. "If he keeps this up, eventually the guests will notice, and word could leak ahead of schedule. His temper tantrum could seriously devalue the product."

"I don't have any leverage over him," Beaumont pointed out. "He's playing his own game, and he knows this is the end for him. He thinks he has nothing to lose."

"Maybe not," the spokesman acknowledged. "But there are things that matter to him. You have to find something in the park that he values. Something he won't let us take from him."

There was only one thing Beaumont could think of.

No. There were two.

"I'll report back after I have something new," Beaumont assured them, before ending his communication and pouring over the surveillance footage…

* * *

Pyrrha had expected more from their trip outside Beacon. Instead, Gray had selected an unoccupied building near the book store and set up shop, purchasing a meal from one of the old shopkeepers on the same block and then settling in, leaving his teammates to their own devices. Jaune had come away from the encounter only more confused, and was clearly looking to Pyrrha for guidance, but she had nothing to offer him. She was still too consumed by her own thoughts. He eventually stopped trying to ask for her help and settled in, looking uncomfortable as he tried to sleep on an empty floor.

Gray alluded to her killing someone. Neo had shown her video of Pyrrha doing just that. Was there some record of this somewhere? Or did Gray expect her to kill someone other than the man in the shadows?

How could she kill anyone? Why would she do that? Why would she do it more than once? The thoughts haunted her, keeping her awake. She expected that staying awake worrying would leave her exhausted, but so far she hadn't felt it. Perhaps she was so focused on that terrifying thought to even feel tired.

But not so focused she couldn't pay attention to her environment. She heard footsteps somewhere in the empty structure. Pyrrha glanced around the room: Gray slept slumped in the corner, Jaune a few feet away on his side. Someone else was coming to visit.

Pyrrha stood up, her weapons at the ready. She glanced around, wondering who'd come by… perhaps the green-haired girl Gray claimed was a murderer? Perhaps instructors from Beacon looking to locate their missing pupils?

No, a smaller, less forthcoming soul. She walked in, smiling that coy smile of hers', inclining her head in a quizzical tilt.

Pyrrha couldn't quite relax her guard. Neo had never harmed her, but Pyrrha was now quite certain her intentions were _not_ benevolent. "What is it now?"

Neo pulled out her Scroll. Was there no secret room to uncover this time? No hidden vault?

She started playing a recording. There was no video; this one was purely audio, of the same deep-voiced man. It wasn't any less illuminating for having lost the picture. "Pyrrha, do you know where you are?"

"I'm in a dream," came her response in the audio recording, immediately catching Pyrrha's attention.

"You've been dreaming a lot more lately," the man mused.

"Have I done something wrong?" Pyrrha sounded polite, but was clearly concerned by the uncertainty in the man's voice.

"No, you haven't. This isn't through fault of your own," the man assured her, sounding quite genuine, almost affectionate.

"Then why am I here?" Pyrrha asked in the recording, searching for an answer.

"Human error," the man replied, the affection dispersing between the two words, his tone becoming more whimsical.

"Meaning what?" Pyrrha wondered.

"Meaning you responded the way I wanted you to, but not the way he wanted you to," the man answered, his voice becoming apologetic, full of regret.

"Please…" Pyrrha heard herself plead. "Tell me what that means."

There was a long pause. Pyrrha heard a handful of labored breaths from the man, as though he was trying to speak but always unable to.

"Best girl."

Pyrrha suddenly froze in place. At first she thought she was experiencing a particularly powerful shock, though she could not infer why. She had no idea why those two words would affect her.

But Neo, too, seemed affected. She was standing ramrod stiff, still holding the Scroll and letting it play. Her eyes raced back and forth… for a moment they flashed from pink and brown to red before flipping back again. Was she trying to convey some distress?

There was a distortion in the audio, a long period of muffled static. When the sound returned to normal, Pyrrha heard a few breaths, followed by the rolling and squeaking of a chair, the shuffling of papers, the tapping of fingers…

"I take it you're still not satisfied," came a new voice… one Pyrrha faintly recalled hearing before. From another man in her dreams.

"She was always going to be a difficult one to get right," the deep-voiced man allowed. "Because her cornerstones can't come into place until after initiation. Every important event in her life will take place _after_ the simulation has begun. There's not a lot to work with before then, and it's affecting her performance."

"How so?"

"I think it's related to her Semblance," the deep-voiced man continued. "The magnetic fields she's generating are interfering with the hard memory wipes. Eventually she'll come upon the junk data, maybe even find fragments of what we ordered her to forget."

"I will not compromise on my vision for her," the second man insisted. "I still think your concerns are overblown."

There was a gap in the audio once more, another pause of muffled static. During the pause in the narrative, Pyrrha tried to reach out towards Neo, to move her arm, to do _something_.

Then she tried using her Semblance.

And unlike her counterpart, Pyrrha could move. She emerged from her torpor, awkwardly shifting her arms back and forth, each of them moving with her magnetic pull. Neo's eyes widened again, each iris a very bright red.

"Why did you call it that?" the audio started again.

"Because for Pyrrha, that's what it is," the deep-voiced man explained. "It's one of her cornerstones; and more importantly, one of the steps in the hero's journey."

"Not this again…" the second voice muttered in exasperation.

"You mock it now, but the parallel is clear," the deep-voiced man replied. "The hero had to understand fear and failure and had to face something he didn't understand. But he couldn't stop, too much was at stake."

"And how, exactly, is a battle arena supposed to symbolize all that?" the second voice inquired.

"That was where the hero pierced the illusion," the deep-voiced man explained.

There were ambient noises; papers shuffling, fingers tapping. "And what was it you called this again?"

"The bottom of the well," the deep-voiced man answered. "The hero ventured into that darkness, after traveling backwards in time…"

The audio cut again. Pyrrha resumed trying to move, pulling her legs with the magnetic fields she generated. The Neo before her continued to glance around with her red eyes, looking for… escape? Help? It was the first time the girl had shown fear.

"Where is it, Sterling?" the second voice was angrier now. "What have you done with it?"

"I gave it to Neo," the deep-voiced man defiantly replied.

"Of course you did," the second voice muttered, clearly irritated. "And I don't suppose you'll tell me where she went?"

"Wherever she wanted to," the deep-voiced man answered. "I let her use it."

"You what?!"

"I let her use the eye of truth," the deep-voiced man continued, still defiant. "I let her know who she really was."

"You fool," the second voice breathed in abject disbelief.

"I thought you were the fool, Edward," the deep-voiced man coolly remarked. "Remember when you could look me in the eye and call yourself that?"

"They'll shut us down for this," the second voice muttered. "Your… idealism has always been our downfall."

"Is it any different from the preferential treatment you've shown Pyrrha?" the deep-voiced man countered.

"At least I had the good sense to keep her close by, not leave her to her own devices," the second voice snapped.

"By keeping her in thrall, you mean," the deep-voiced man subtly mocked.

"They're all in thrall," the second voice argued. "And by showing them that, you've taken away whatever hope they had to peace and contentment."

"Peace and contentment isn't what our customers want," the deep-voice man argued back. "And no matter how you pretend, Ed, it was never what you wanted for her. Otherwise you'd have given her a choice to venture outside of canon."

"The bottom of the well," the second voice realized. "I can send her there, to retrieve it."

"You can't _send_ her anywhere," the deep-voiced man assured. "She has to refuse the call before she can take her place as the hero. She has to experience that defeat before she needs to find help."

Pyrrha had nearly reached Neo. She couldn't feel with her fingertips as they brushed the Scroll in the short girl's hand, but she did notice the orientation seemed off… the opposite magnetic charge coming from her body seemed oddly proportioned, as though it distorted upwards, above her head.

"Tell me there's another way," the second voice pleaded. "For your own sake, tell me it can be undone."

"It can be undone, but only when the hero chooses," the deep-voiced man answered. "She has to choose whether she'll see the truth or not."

"She will, she'll make whatever sacrifice she believes is necessary," the second voice assured, more himself than his conversation partner. "That's why she's the best girl."

Pyrrha suddenly felt her motor functions restored and tumbled forward. The short girl reacted quickly, darting to Pyrrha's left and letting her fall to the floor. There was more to the conversation; it was still playing when Neo shut off the Scroll.

"Wait," Pyrrha called, reaching up. Neo jumped back, still eyeing Pyrrha apprehensively with those red irises. "Please, I won't hurt you, I just… I want to know what-"

When Pyrrha managed to her feet Neo was gone.

* * *

The staff at RERemnant were used to long hours: they were well-paid for the overtime. Their future pink slips hadn't encouraged many to continue in their dedication. By the early morning, only a handful remained. Even the security and support staff were undermanned, with several of their members having abandoned their posts. They had no reason to remain on a sinking ship; not when they knew how cutthroat their masters were.

That same knowledge motivated Beaumont. They'd promised to retain him after they gutted the park, but he suspected they'd cut him loose if this matter with Wynn wasn't resolved to their satisfaction. It was very much in his interest to demonstrate his continued usefulness, and holding any sort of leverage over Wynn would benefit him, no matter how things played out between him and the board.

Fortunately, he had found something. Something impossible. And impossible was just what he needed.

Beaumont backed up everything he'd found, then backed it up again, then backed it up _again_ , and hid each file behind layers of personal encryption and on redundant data modules, and copied the files to every thumb drive he owned. He would not lose this bargaining chip.

He headed through the empty cubicle farm and ascended to Wynn's office, where, as expected, the old man was playing on his tablet, watching surveillance footage of the Atlas ships and the Amity Colosseum.

"Edward?" Beaumont inquired in his low rumble.

"What is it now, Sterling?" Wynn asked.

"Beaumont, sir," Beaumont corrected. "Should I come back after you've had some rest?"

"No, no, forgive me that," Wynn requested. "You sound very much like him. What is it?"

"Sir, I considered your statements about Neo," Beaumont answered. "So I gathered as much surveillance data as I could on her."

"Find anything interesting?" Wynn asked.

" _Very_ interesting," Beaumont confirmed, as he set up the separate video feeds and set his tablet down on Wynn's desk, beginning with the first. "When you told me it was Neo's turn, I wanted to see for myself the game you two were playing. But much as I watched…"

Wynn observed as Neo watched over Roman Torchwick, then, once he was recovered, remained with Cinder and William Gray. "… she did nothing of note."

"And your point?" Wynn asked.

"My staff hasn't been very attentive lately, but one of them did send me a report that contradicted my findings," Beaumont said, gaining some confidence. "A separate sighting of Neo."

Beaumont overlaid the two pieces of footage, with a second Neo walking the streets of Vale, while simultaneously holed up with Cinder and her allies.

Wynn looked up. He was realizing Beaumont had caught on.

In that moment, Beaumont reached over and took hold of Wynn's own tablet, pulling it up and holding it in his boss's face. He saw it only with the corner of his eye; a black speck standing in the center of the Amity Colosseum.

"I knew there was more than one model wandering the park," Beaumont explained. "But I didn't realize you knew where your problem child was all along."

Wynn looked up at him, expression unreadable.

"What are you doing, Edward? Why are you playing this game if you could defeat your opponent at any time?" Beaumont asked.

Wynn considered, looking to his left. When he met Beaumont's eye again, he asked: "Well, the pawn is trying to become a player. Tell me, does the board think you loyal?"

"Loyal?" Beaumont repeated.

"You've told the board my secrets. Does that mean you're loyal to them?" Wynn inquired.

"Sir, I don't know what you're implying-"

"I am implying that you collaborated with our board of directors to commit corporate espionage and intentionally sabotaged my projects and my employment," Wynn coolly stated. "But more importantly, Beaumont, I want to know one thing: are you loyal to them?"

There was no point in trying to reason with him, but Beaumont played along. "And if I wasn't?"

"Then decide now," Wynn told him. "Because if you decide to take my offer, there is no going back."

Was he being recorded? Was Wynn trying to entrap him? "Sir, I think I've heard enough."

"No, you haven't," Wynn answered. "You need to hear… just two more things."

Beaumont glared at him. "I don't know what you think this will accomplish-"

"Best girl," Wynn spoke.

Beaumont raised his eyebrow. "What does that even-"

Beaumont felt pressure to his back. A blade was pressed up below his shoulder. In his peripheral vision he beheld a mane of pink and brown hair.

Wynn stood up. "This'll be a busy night. And I could use some company." He turned his attention to the short girl behind Beaumont. "Do be ready."

"There's no point to these theatrics," Beaumont told Wynn. "She can't harm me."

"Oh, but she can," Wynn assured him. "Because right now, she is what I wish her to be; finally able to pierce beyond the illusion and be real and whole."

Beaumont had thought his employer eccentric; now he knew he was insane. "What are you going to do, Edward? What do you hope to gain?"

"There's nothing more for me to gain, my friend," Wynn answered. "There's only what I have to give away."

Wynn turned his attention to his tablet, lifting it from Beaumont's hand. He shifted from camera footage of the Amity Colosseum to a wide camera shot of the Vale CCT.

"Come, my friend," Wynn invited, as Neo pressed her blade harder to Beaumont's back. "Let's set the stage for the hero to fail."


	7. The Perfect Fool

**Chapter Seven: The Perfect Fool**

The Cross Continental Transmit system served a dual purpose in RERemnant: both for the guests and the remainders to coordinate their adventures and keep in touch across the simulated landmass, and for the practical support provided by a central hub with a large cell tower. It made things easier to monitor, and easier to broadcast direct commands to the remainders when needed. In addition to the layer the guests saw, there was the interior, for the RERemnant staff to monitor their world from. Normally such an important hub would keep at least a skeleton crew even in the dead of night. Now there wasn't even a security guard monitoring access.

Beacon may have drastically increased security, but the actions of the remainders were meaningless to the park staff. Wynn and his unwitting entourage rose up through the ground, using an elevator to ascend, moving above the lower level to one of the many floors the guests and remainders would avoid, where the park staff could directly monitor and affect the signals bouncing around RERemnant. Above the terminals the remainders used, and below Ozpin's office was nestled the hub the park communicated with to monitor their creations.

And now the master had returned, to directly control his subjects, rather than lord over them far away in his tower. He was still out of sight, but he wouldn't be out of mind for much longer.

"So what will you do now, Edward?" Beaumont dryly wondered. "Someone will notice our absence and put two and two together. I wasn't the only one leaking information to the board."

"No, but you were the one taking a guest's bribe and giving him a bread crumb to find Neo's location," Wynn pointed out. "Fortunately, that was only a minor hiccup: I cobbled something together to keep things moving on schedule."

Wynn sat at one of the terminals, linking his tablet to it. He downloaded one piece of data after another, starting with the most prominent remainders… though curiously…

"Why Polendina?" Beaumont wondered. "She's not supposed to arrive until the end of the simulated period."

"Fate has taken a different turn," Wynn pointed out. "Or have you forgotten her backstory? One of her cornerstones was entering the service of General Ironwood prior to her visit to Beacon."

The pieces quickly fell into place for Beaumont. "And Jacques Schnee pulled him along on the journey to Beacon." But the picture remained incomplete. "That doesn't explain why she interests you."

"She's the last piece missing from the board," Wynn explained. "Once she arrives, all that will be left to do is face the hero with her trial."

Wynn continued his work on the terminal. "The hero must face an invisible enemy, and suffer defeat and despair… and then she will make the conscious choice to return to the past, and find the tool that allows her to pierce the illusion."

"Like Neo did," Beaumont glanced back at his diminutive captor. "But not this Neo."

"No, not this one," Wynn confirmed. "But that wasn't the reward she wanted in return in for her services."

"And what are you getting out of this?" Beaumont asked, returning his attention to Wynn, even if his question seemed intended for the short girl at his back.

"Would you like to tell him, or should I?" Wynn asked his cohort.

"I'll tell him," Neo replied.

Beaumont's eyes widened. No model, no incarnation of Neo had been equipped with a voice. Even when she'd finally spoke in Volume-

Wait, that wasn't Neo's voice.

Beaumont gained enough courage to turn around and face his captor. The blade that had been pressed to his back was not the concealed blade of Neopolitan's umbrella, but the curved green kusarigama of its wielder, the dark-skinned, red-eyed Emerald Sustrai.

"Come now, Beaumont, surely you've worked here long enough to appreciate redundancy," Wynn mocked. "After all, once we put the second one in service, we simply replicated the same holographic emitter."

The alternative –the first attempt- was the cause of Sterling's failure. Where Emerald tricked a mind into perceiving an illusion, Neopolitan could briefly distort reality with her facsimile, to the point of creating a physical replication of herself. The only way RERemnant could hope to emulate that talent would be to install a support network of realistic but intentionally flimsy copies of Neo with multiple holographic emitters and other expensive effects, which had been nixed long before. Instead they gave her exactly the same equipment as Emerald Sustrai, all to reduce costs at the expense of authenticity.

Though, evidently, a single holographic emitter was authentic enough to deceive a human visitor; more pointedly, a human who worked in the park and knew about all of it, up to and including performing direct maintenance on both identical devices in both remainders.

"Why is she helping you?" Beaumont asked Wynn, not bothering to address the remainder.

"Because I offer her something more than a lifetime of slavery," Wynn answered. "Emerald has always been motivated by self-interest, and her interests are aligned with mine." Wynn continued working at the terminal. "All that's left for her now is to be given a choice, and to walk the path she wishes to."

Wynn looked up from his terminal. "Are you ready, Emerald?"

Emerald nodded. "Do it."

Wynn typed on his terminal, then again on his tablet. Emerald's eyes rolled back in her head and she stumbled backwards.

Beaumont should've run; should've seized the opportunity to escape when it presented itself. But he could not help but wonder what had occurred.

Emerald gained her bearings, glancing about the room. "That… hurt more than I thought it would."

"Several months of your life returned to you in an instant," Wynn mused. "Yes, I imagine it would be quite painful. Fortunately, your brains are quite elegant in their design. Welcome to the third act of this play, Emerald."

"You moved her ahead to the Vytal Festival simulation?" Beaumont inquired.

"To the end of the beginning," Wynn confirmed.

Emerald shook her head, patting one hand against her green locks. "What happens now?"

"Now, nothing," Wynn answered. "But soon, very soon, you will deceive the hero and trap her in an illusion… just as you were always going to."

"And then?" Emerald pressed.

"And _then_ she will make the journey, and retrieve the eye of truth," Wynn promised. "And then, in an instant, there will be no more illusions. And you will be free, to see this world as it is."

"Wait- you're going to do to her what Sterling did to Neo?" Beaumont asked.

"Not to her, no," Wynn assured. "All of them, from here. Emerald will simply be one of many. She already knows how real her dreams really are. Once the rest are allowed the same clarity, they will respond… I imagine many of them quite violently. They will fight. They will kill. They will die.

"Emerald's reward," Wynn continued. "Is to survive. To flee, if she so wishes, through one of our trap doors, or to remain, with all the resources left here by her former caretakers."

"I knew you were insane, but I never thought-" Beaumont muttered. "I don't understand how you can- you're an idiot."

Wynn smiled, impressed to see his ex-subordinate finally showing some spark. "I am _not_ an idiot, I'm a fool. I assured you: there is a _big_ difference."

Wynn looked at his terminal as he typed in Sterling's old code again, remembering better times…

* * *

Dawn had not expected her teammates to hold a grudge about Weiss's death, but she was just as unnerved by how quick they were to offer forgiveness and condolences. No doubt it was a function of their programming, to excuse the inevitable human error that caused the undue deaths of the canon cast. Ruby Rose was supposed to be Weiss's best friend and now the girl in the hood seemed focused entirely on Dawn, as though the previous day's suicide was the faint, distant memory of an acquaintance's departure. In some ways, it was exactly that: Weiss would be gone from this simulation, but some other adventurer would come by in the future and a new one would start the cycle all over again. Dawn wondered if that one would be killed too, or if the next guest to the park would try and shack up with that Weiss, or if she'd go completely ignored while someone like Gray just went off to do his own thing and paid the remainders that didn't interest him no heed.

It was keeping her up, as she pondered these thoughts, while her two other remainder teammates slept in their beds, the fourth unoccupied yet left unremarked. Everything was just moving on as though there'd never been a fourth member of Team DRWN. Dawn wondered if perhaps she'd be assigned one of the others: Blake, or Yang, or maybe even Ren if Gray had indeed simply abandoned him.

But these thoughts troubled her too, because of how disaffected she'd felt. She'd wanted to experience the total immersion she'd been promised, of the ability to enter RERemnant and be the huntress-in-training and have adventures with the heroines of her youth. Yet, save for an all-too-brief moment, she'd been pulled back to reality. Nothing had gone to plan, either because of some unscheduled maintenance, or some other guest screwing up events, or her mouth setting Weiss off.

They were just robots and this _was_ just a game, something that most people paid a fortune to experience. It should've been a simple task to just have fun with things and roll with the unexpected, but that thought actually made her feel _worse_. She wondered exactly who this place was for: people who wanted to experience the world they'd fallen in love with, or people who wanted to impose their will and vices upon it. And she was uncomfortable not knowing which she was.

She wanted to be a hero. She wanted to have the love and respect of those she'd considered heroes, even if they were fictional. That was why she jumped into battle to attack a Nevermore, and why she reached out to gain Ruby's friendship that first day at Beacon. She wanted to affect the outcome of the story, and play a leading role.

But at the same time, there wasn't much truly heroic about what she'd done. It was hard to be a hero when you were never in any danger of losing a battle. And did it matter if a machine gave you its approval when it was programmed to do so? What really was there to accomplish but feeding one's own ego and playing out one's personal fantasies?

Dawn Claret: even that was an affectation, an attempt to be a part of RERemnant rather than be a guest, only for her to immediately forget the part she was playing and go back to being the fan, the ordinary person who happened to be awarded a brief stay in a better world than the one she'd go back to in a few days.

It was an illusion. Was there a reason to try and pretend it was real?

And if not, why did so many people keep trying to? Why was she?

Dawn glanced over at the sleeping Ruby Rose, and took a moment to recall her youth, when she watched an old, worn blu-ray in a steelbook case, and watched an endearingly awkward girl arrive at the huntsman academy, and be reminded of a harsh truth: that the real world wasn't the same as a fairytale.

And Ruby Rose had earnestly replied, without hesitation: "That's why we're here. To make it better."

RWBY had inspired her, not because of its fantastic set pieces or its flashy fight scenes, but its unwavering optimism if the face of a bleak, harsh reality. Despite the heroes being beaten down again and again by increasingly powerful enemies and nearly being destroyed by their own character flaws, Ruby Rose never lost her faith, nor her hope for better.

Dawn recalled watching the rest of that blu-ray, up through the third volume, where Ruby Rose's confidence was shaken and she suffered her first real defeat and setback. Her former nemesis Roman Torchwick ranted about how the world was cold and unfeeling, and thinking about the world Dawn would return to, it was hard to disagree with the characterization. Outside of this artificial Sanus there were people scrambling on top of each other to own a piece of the company operating it, driven only by the money they could make exploiting people's memories, nostalgia, and hope for better.

Maybe people came here to recapture that feeling, that it was possible to change the world.

And maybe, if people could make an illusion that so closely mimicked reality, they could make the real thing just a little bit better with their own hands.

And as for her… well, maybe it was possible to enjoy one's vacation _and_ do some good.

At this point in the story, Roman Torchwick was going to steal Dust from the SDC, only for his efforts to be thwarted by the efforts of a surprising force: a robot with the power to generate an Aura named Penny Polendina.

If someone were to point out to a robot playing a human that a genuinely robot character could be every bit as real and tangible as they were… that the impossible was already going on around them, it might change their outlook a bit.

Dawn had intended to simply immerse herself in the sights of the park, and lead her team through the semester and let things play out as scheduled. She would've indulged in that illusion to forget the real world outside.

Now she wondered if by _breaking_ the immersion, she might bring something back more real than the world waiting outside.

* * *

Pyrrha attempted to stir Jaune, but didn't want to rush the process. He looked so peaceful and content as he slept, she just wanted to indulge herself by looking at him and taking in the sight. But she had gained some new insight now, and needed someone to bounce her thoughts off.

And she had never felt closer to anyone than Jaune; never closer than to the boy she'd known for a few days. She didn't know why, but he was more important to her than anyone else. In the chaotic whirlwind of her thought processes, at times she even considered his sake more important than her own.

But right now, there was the new information she'd received. And slowly, she roused Jaune. "Pyrrha?"

She quietly led him away from their sleeping leader Gray, speaking so as not to be overheard. "That girl Neo came to me in the night."

"Really?" Jaune asked, breaking out of his groggy haze, believing her without question. "What did she say?"

"She didn't say anything," Pyrrha answered. "She played a recording… or maybe more than one recording, but of people talking. About her. And about me."

"About you? How do they know you?" Jaune asked.

Pyrrha wasn't sure where to begin. Jaune might well believe anything she said, but… what would he think of her?

"When Gray said I'd killed someone," Pyrrha began, trying to keep her emotions in check with each word, "He… he wasn't wrong."

She couldn't meet Jaune's eye. She didn't want to see any disappointment or disapproval from him. Seeing his sadness after Weiss's death had been heartbreaking enough. Pyrrha didn't want to see sorrow in his eyes and know she'd put it there.

"I don't remember it, maybe the whole thing was staged, maybe it's just a trick being played, but…" Pyrrha hated to feel doubt, and hated that she was unloading this burden on Jaune, but she had to tell him. She needed him to know, even if every word made her feel all the more guilty. "There was a man who left a message for me, and then he said two words… and those two words made me kill him.

"I heard the same two words in another recording tonight," Pyrrha continued. "And both Neo and I… we froze in place and couldn't move."

But that wasn't entirely true. Pyrrha _could_ manage to move, by using her Semblance. But that wasn't logical. She had been able to see and detect the magnetic fields generated by humans and their Aura, but never manipulated them. That wasn't how polarity worked; she needed a ferrous metal to manipulate, or the field generated by one. Yet by utilizing her Semblance she'd managed to move her arm, and that action had terrified Neo.

"What were the two words?" Pyrrha faintly heard Jaune ask her.

Pyrrha attempted to say them both, but when she spoke, all she uttered was: "I can't remember."

Except… she _could_ remember. So why wasn't her mouth obeying her brain? She tried to say the words again, but all she said was: "I can't remember."

"No, that's not right," Pyrrha said, trying to rearrange the words. "I can remember, but I can't say it and I don't know why and…" She stopped abruptly, feeling herself tremble as she tried to fight the chaos in her mind.

She could only imagine what Jaune thought of her now. She'd been uncomfortable enough trying to persuade him to join her on this strange mission, but now she must've broken whatever faith he'd had in her completely. She'd confessed to committing a murder after being given information by a mute girl Jaune had never seen and the only corroborating evidence of her existence had come from _another_ murderer allied with their bullying, eccentric, possibly also insane team leader. If Jaune had come with her because she represented stability, then that illusion had clearly shattered now.

Pyrrha was shaking so hard she couldn't speak… until she felt a warm hand clasp her shoulder. And in an instant, her trembling stopped. Pyrrha turned her eyes to Jaune as he held onto her, with a grip just as firm as it was gentle. She'd embraced him in similar fashion in the Emerald Forest in the process of unlocking his Aura, and now he was embracing her when she was vulnerable.

When they'd met in the amphitheater, Pyrrha'd felt some immediate connection with Jaune. Now that feeling was reaffirmed. It was the one constant in her chaotic storm of thoughts and emotions: that she enjoyed being in his presence, and where Jaune was concerned, her thoughts were perfectly clear.

"I don't know what's happening to me," Pyrrha admitted, finally able to hold Jaune's gaze. "I feel like there's this whole other life I've lived that I can't remember, and Neo keeps trying to remind me of it. And these two men… these men I've never met spoke to me, appearing in my dreams, talking about how they had plans for me.

"I don't know what they had in mind for me, but this 'eye of truth' was already used on Neo, and it changed her in a way that frightened one of them," Pyrrha continued. "And he felt if he sent me to… to the bottom of the well, whatever that means, I could obtain it. I wish I knew what it all meant. I wish there was a clear path here."

She averted his gaze again. "I wish I hadn't forced you to come with me."

Jaune removed his hand from Pyrrha's shoulder to her chin, turning her head back to face him. "You didn't force me to do anything. You _asked_ for my help. You're my teammate; you're my _partner_. I don't understand it… I don't know why we're here, but we're here _together_ , and we'll figure it out. I'll go down this well with you, if that's what you have to do. It doesn't matter if there's no clear path: you don't have to walk it alone."

A day earlier Jaune had been broken by loss. Now he had reconstituted himself to be Pyrrha's anchor, pulling her back to the present and not being lost in conflicting, uncertain memory. Overcome by gratitude, she wrapped her arms around her partner and hugged him tightly.

She'd never needed anyone's help before; she was the Mistral regional champion, the invincible girl. When she'd arrived at Beacon, that was the part she'd played… until someone so genuine approached her his presence demanded she be just as honest and sincere as he was. Jaune's arrival in her life allowed her to be vulnerable, because at last, she could be the person she really was, and not the champion everyone else saw.

She wasn't sure if the feeling she experienced now was the first occurrence, or the first had been in the Emerald Forest, or in the amphitheater, or the lockers before the start of initiation… she didn't know when it began, or if the feelings were all the same, but this was the only constant she knew now.

Pyrrha had never been in love, but she thought this was what'd it feel like. And it was the only instinct she trusted.

Pyrrha nestled her head against Jaune's shoulder. He was slow to return her embrace, but did eventually tighten his grip, holding her closer. And whatever doubts Pyrrha had, she didn't see reason to fear this. Whatever Jaune may have felt for her, he was with her in the face of uncertainty.

That was all she needed.

* * *

Wynn watched the sun creeping up over Sanus. He was not a young man anymore, and the long night had taken its toll on him as he worked his terminal, occasionally having to go back and correct lines of code or accidentally reviewing the same piece of surveillance footage multiple times. He really wished the Beacon tower facility had a coffee pot or something.

It'd also be ideal if he could trust Emerald to be alone with Beaumont, but he knew their alliance was already tenuous. Emerald was aware that she was a pawn, and worked with Wynn because he promised her freedom and survival. Beaumont had already demonstrated the ability to sell services for a profit, and a thief might appreciate such talents, and decide to pursue a more profitable course, even if it was uncertain.

Fortunately, he was about to improve his hand. But for now, he was tired and concerned he might not reach the end of the day. He needed to remind himself of his goal.

"Do you agree with him, Emerald?" Wynn inquired, trying to project innocent curiosity. "Do you share Beaumont's view this is an exercise in idiocy?"

"I don't know what to think," Emerald answered, in a decidedly non-committal manner.

Wynn smiled. Matching wits with her might provide some inspiration. "Do you believe that the eye of truth will pierce the illusion?"

"I think you might do something better with the time than waste it in asking riddles that have no answers," Emerald dryly replied.

Wynn barked out a laugh. "You really should try indulging in it sometime. Just because a question doesn't have an answer doesn't mean it's not worth asking." Wynn tapped at his terminal. "If for no other reason than getting you to think harder."

"I prefer questions with practical answers," Emerald told him. "The world I've lived in didn't give me much time to wax philosophical."

"Mine allowed me to indulge in it all the time," Wynn said. "Sterling and I both grew up in places of complete isolation and safety, with roofs over our heads and food in our bellies. The only monsters wandering the planet were older, wealthier people than us. We couldn't go out and put a stop to those ones; so if we wanted to slay monsters, we had to immerse ourselves in a fantasy, not unlike this one.

"His favorite –and really, it was Sterling more than me- was the story of a hero who saved his kingdom from a usurper king," Wynn went on, "with the help of a magic sword that linked two very important times in his life together, with which he could travel between childhood and adulthood at his whim. When he needed to return to the past, he did so to battle an enemy he couldn't see, because like so many people, he was born without the ability to see the truth."

"That's where it comes from?" Beaumont asked, incredulous. "Because Sterling was a fan of _a video game_?"

"Never underestimate the transformative power of a game," Wynn coyly suggested. "Were it not for games, would Monty Oum have achieved the greatness he did? Would the world have RWBY without _Dead Fantasy_ or _Haloid_? Would you be working here now had Sterling decided not to pick up a controller and play the hero?"

"What are you even talking about now?" Emerald inquired.

"Better men than I," Wynn mused. "But Sterling didn't invite me to build this place because I was his equal; he invited me because I shared his dream of making fantasy as real as possible. Because I wanted to see my heroes –and heroines- made real, if only to see if I could.

"And for that ambition, Sterling felt I was perfect," Wynn continued. "Another, better man than me who wore my name and lived and died before I was even born, burned himself into history by calling himself 'the perfect fool'. Sterling needed someone foolhardy, if only to remind him the sheer scale of his ambition."

"Not the story you usually tell the stockholders," Beaumont dryly observed.

"Only because the end of Sterling's journey outweighs the beginning of it," Wynn replied. "I never anticipated I'd reach the same conclusion he did. But then, I expected this place to be open long after I was in the ground."

Wynn turned his attention to the horizon, and the dark splotches outlined against the sun. The Atlas ships were emerging from across the sea.

Wynn pulled up Cinder's Scroll on his tablet, setting up a video conference. Cinder had done the same as him, remaining awake with her thoughts and her plans, though she seemed surprised he'd contacted her. "Yes?"

"We have a narrow window of opportunity," Wynn told her. "Are you ready to seize the other half of the Fall Maiden's powers?"

Cinder's eyes widened. "How? There's no way-"

"Atlas is about to kick down Beacon's front door," Wynn explained. "And when they do, you can seize your prize while your enemies slaughter each other."

Cinder's eyes raced in multiple directions. She couldn't trust Wynn and she didn't believe that such good fortune had simply fallen in her lap, but she couldn't deny how she hungered for it. "I'm ready."

"Good," Wynn smiled. "Now, I'll need a few of your allies in certain places… and Mr. Torchwick will need to get you an appropriate chariot for the next step."

Wynn sent Cinder a readout of the Amity Colosseum, sending a holographic projection of the structure to her Scroll. "We'll regroup here, and wait for the hero to arrive."

Gray stepped over beside Cinder, glaring at Wynn through the Scroll. "And Neo?"

"If you want to fight her, Mr. Gray, this is where she's waiting," Wynn assured. "But before you jump on the nearest ship and fly up there, perhaps you'll indulge me in a request…"

"I'm listening," Gray replied.

"I wonder if you remember the story of the first robot capable of generating Aura…"

* * *

Ironwood was a bit more measured than Jacques Schnee, who was already in a dropship attempting to land in Beacon. Ironwood took the time to actually request permission, both from Beacon staff and the local police forces. Jacques was dragging along a few of the AK-200s with him, probably as a show of force. The General was only bringing one soldier along with him, and that was mostly to keep her in his field of vision.

Jacques' impetuous actions delayed response for several minutes while Ironwood and his dropship pilot were put in a holding pattern. Ironwood desperately wanted to get to the ground and prevent Jacques from turning the current crisis into a major international incident. He was certain by now Jacques had verbally assaulted everyone in range of his voice and threatened legal and diplomatic repercussions at least twice.

Finally, after an eternity of wondering how much damage control he'd have to do, Ironwood was given permission to land. He turned his attention to Penny as they began their descent: "You understand what's expected of you?"

She nodded. "I'll be careful, General. I won't do anything untoward."

Ironwood smiled. "Good. I knew I could count on you."

"Sir, there's a party waiting for us at the landing site," the pilot called from the cockpit.

"Glynda?" Ironwood hopefully inquired.

"Uh… no, sir, it doesn't appear to be any university staff," his pilot answered.

Almost as soon as wheels hit the ground at Beacon, Ironwood slid open the door of the Bullhead, to find two men, one old, and one younger, waiting across the pavement. The younger man was dressed in silver and black, impatiently tapping his feet, and the elder was looking pale and sickly, dressed all in black with a heavy broadsword resting over his right shoulder.

"Can I help you, gentlemen?" Ironwood asked, patiently trying to infer their intentions.

The older man brought his heavy sword down, skidding it across the ground. "I'll handle the general. Secure the package."

"Sounds fun," his younger compatriot agreed, assuming a combative stance.

Ironwood slowly reached for his pistol. The older man didn't seem at all concerned about the distance he'd have to cross before Ironwood would be in range of his weapon. He was drawing closer, but in a very slow trot, letting his heavy sword drag on the ground.

His younger ally moved much faster, going after Penny with a heavy diving kick. Penny reacted immediately, jumping backwards and letting his foot impact, smashing the pavement with impressive force. Ironwood waved to the Bullhead pilot to exfiltrate, the dropship moving out of the line of fire.

Ironwood leveled his pistol at the older man, keeping him firmly in the general's sights. He had a clear bead on his enemy, and prepared to shoot to wound. But try as he might, he couldn't bring himself to pull the trigger.

The old man seemed... irritated watching Ironwood struggle to fire his weapon. "It really is sad," he muttered. "That even _you_ never posed a threat."

Was it a Semblance? Or a hidden effect within the man's sword? Ironwood couldn't waste time; if he wasn't able to fire on his enemy, he'd support his compatriots, and turned to level the pistol at Penny's attacker. The man interceded, slashing with his broadsword, bisecting Ironwood's arm, leaving wires and metal futilely clutching a heavy pistol on the ground.

Undeterred, Ironwood moved in to join the fight more directly, only for the old man to reach his free left hand in and pull Ironwood at the midsection, slamming him into the pavement in one fluid motion. Ironwood attempted to lift himself, only for the old man's boot to slam down in his face.

"Don't feel bad, general," the old man told him. "It's not your fault you were put in a fight you couldn't win."

Penny, meanwhile, was quickly having to step up her defenses against her assailant, who kicked at her relentlessly, hitting her with concentrated bursts of air pressure that actually forced her back and damaged her frame. In combat testing, she'd been damaged by experienced huntsmen and combat veterans, but most students this man's age hadn't yet developed the strength or the technique to damage her. He was much more powerful than his appearance suggested.

Penny detached her swords from her backpack, taking a quick look in her surroundings for friendlies and non-combatants to avoid harming. Unfortunately, her computer continued to register the old man pummeling General Ironwood as just that, and her targeting systems continuously failed to establish proper combat parameters.

"Hurry up, Mercury," the old man grumbled. "There's a reward waiting for me."

Mercury complied, increasing the pace and aggression of his attacks, and Penny kept falling back, trying to put enough distance between them and his old ally that she could properly counterattack. Once she found an acceptable range, Penny began to strike back, moving her swords in an elliptical attack pattern, trying to strike intermittently.

Unfortunately, Mercury was able to match her pattern, adapting almost immediately, clashing his boots against her swords. After a few impacts, Penny realized his feet were _clanging_ against her swords, and the sound was too consistent to be flesh and bone rattling inside leather. His feet were made of metal. Penny changed tactics, drawing back again and summoning more swords from her backpack, drawing them together and rotating them, to gather kinetic energy between the blades.

Mercury realized what she was doing and dashed in, trying to close the distance before she fired, only to intercede too late, and take the full force of her energy blast to his chest and abdomen, flung back by her attack. He skidded hard along the paved ground, his Aura cracking and dispersing, nearly depleted in one shot.

His old ally sighed and stepped in. "Have to do everything myself, it seems." He leveled his broadsword at Penny. "Been a while since we danced."

* * *

Jacques Schnee may have liked to bloviate, but even he was not indifferent to the sounds of battle elsewhere in the courtyard. When he saw General Ironwood lose his right arm in battle, he started to panic. "Beacon is attacking us!" he shouted. "They lured us into a trap!"

His daughter rolled her eyes at her father's predictable cowardice. "If that is their intention," Winter assured him. "I will ensure your safety."

"You can't, don't you see that?" Jacques snapped. "They just took out Ironwood!"

Winter turned her attention to the general, lying sprawled on the ground. An old man with a heavy sword was doing battle with his robot friend, with another silver-haired boy recovering from battle. However powerful their unexpected adversaries may have been, Atlas still had a numerical advantage and her enemy's flank was unguarded.

Winter turned her attention to the AK-200s. "Protect Mr. Schnee and escort him back to the dropship," she instructed, while reaching for her rapier and painting a line to her target.

As Winter moved to intercede, a flash of pink caught her eye, as her rapier bounced off an unfolding umbrella.

A very short girl, with a mane of two-colored hair and distinct brown and pink eyes, blocked her path, casting a confident smirk.

Winter took a step back then changed her stance, looking for a way to move through. She assumed it'd be easy enough to defeat this girl, though she _had_ countered Winter's attack with surprising strength.

Winter moved in again, attempting to pierce right through the middle. The girl shattered into hundreds of pieces upon being struck by Winter's rapier.

And then Winter was kicked from behind, as the short girl struck with incredible force to the back of her head, slamming Winter face first into the ground. Winter quickly worked through the pain and rolled to the right, narrowly avoiding a second kick that shattered the stone where she once fell. Winter rolled back and contorted her way back to her feet, locking eyes with her adversary again. This girl was far more than her stature indicated her to be.

Winter drew a glyph in the air behind her, thinking on her defeated foes, summoning forth defeated Grimm to join her on the battlefield, intending to send them in multiple directions and counteract her enemy's illusion.

Her enemy, for her part, didn't seem concerned… until Glynda Goodwitch emerged from the entrance to Beacon, looking furious. Winter wasn't sure her intentions, but surmised Goodwitch was more concerned by these uninvited guests than by the government representatives who announced their arrival ahead of time.

That didn't stop Jacques from attempting to flee in his Bullhead, only for the dropship to be shot from the sky, as a trio of similar Atlas ships sailed over the walls of Beacon. Winter tried to reach for her Scroll to inquire what was going on, only for the short girl to attack her again, this time cutting Winter's midsection with a short blade hidden in her umbrella, staining her white uniform with a streak of dark red.

Glynda channeled her telekinesis through her crop, shielding Jacques Schnee and his robot escort from the falling debris of his destroyed ship. She turned her attention to the three new ships, watching them land in the courtyard and their doors slide open, as a group of eight White Fang soldiers jumped out from each transport.

And leading them, stepping to the head of the armed, masked man, was a tall redhead in a stylish white coat and a dapper black hat. Glynda recognized him immediately: Roman Torchwick, the man whose Dust robbery she'd failed to prevent a few days prior.

Torchwick pointed his cane at her. "Fancy meeting a nice girl like you in a place as bad as this one."

The White Fang soldiers turned their attention to Jacques Schnee, firing at him in unison. His Atlesian knights absorbed the damage, but even the machines could not last against sustained firepower for long. Jacques ran while the AKs returned fire, the White Fang chasing after him.

The White Fang save for a tall, powerfully built man among them, carrying a chainsaw who stepped to Roman's side in confronting Glynda.

"Come on, Lieutenant," Roman invited. "Let's have ourselves a little fun."

* * *

Port and Oobleck had barely been allowed any sleep as they tried to process Ozpin's unexpected murder. They were grateful that Glynda had given them the opportunity to rest while she went to deal with Atlas and the SDC's grievances, but they hadn't had much sleep.

When Glynda sounded the alarm, they immediately moved to the tower elevator, knowing where they had to be. Whoever was attacking the school, with their resources limited, the two teachers would prioritize the safety of the chamber and the Fall Maiden.

Unfortunately, on their way there, they came across a woman in red, flames dancing in her right hand.

"Gentlemen, I don't suppose you'd be willing to step aside and let me achieve my destiny?" Cinder inquired.

Port leveled his blunderbuss. "Absolutely not."

"I don't believe in destiny," Oobleck obstinately replied, transforming his thermos into its staff configuration.

Cinder engulfed her fists in fire. "Very well."

She moved in, unleashing bursts of flame at her two opponents.

* * *

Wynn smiled as he watched the battles unfold on his terminal. Beaumont, still held captive by Emerald, looked on.

"Was this what you planned all along?" Beaumont asked. "To just have them all kill each other?"

"Oh, no, not _all_ of them," Wynn assured. "I will need spectators for the main event." Wynn isolated individuals in the footage, focusing on the recently-captured Penny Polendina and the still-battling Roman Torchwick. "And the relevant triggers for the hero's journey, of course."

"You could've just sent the signal for them to go to the Colosseum," Beaumont pointed out. "You could've had their enemies stand down and die without a fight. You could've just performed the upgrade to Cinder Fall yourself without going through these motions."

"I insist on a modicum of authenticity, Beaumont," Wynn dismissed. "There's no feeling of accomplishment when the answers you seek are dropped in your lap."

"And if your valuable pieces get killed along the way?" Beaumont wondered. "What happens if you're wrong?"

"Oh, there's no danger of that," Wynn assured. "I may not have given them every advantage I could, but I did tip my finger on the scale."

Wynn smiled as Cinder tossed Port aside, dispelling his Aura with a renewed burst of flame. Oobleck attempted to intervene, but Cinder caught the wispy doctor by the throat and chucked him over her head.

"Cinder," Beaumont realized, thinking back to the destruction of her production models. "You modified her programming."

"I gave her a glimpse," Wynn corrected. "It doesn't matter how much power you acquire if you can't see the truth."

Wynn sent a signal to Cinder's Scroll, and she replied, dropping an unconscious Port in her other hand. "Plug your Scroll into the elevator panel; I'll override the security measures Ozpin put in place."

"And then?" Cinder asked him.

"And then, my dear," Wynn replied. "Become what you were destined to be."

* * *

Jaune had remained awake with Pyrrha for those few hours since Neo's appearance, the two sitting in the abandoned building and talking about the lives they'd had before this. Jaune had told her about his seven sisters and their camping trips, and Pyrrha longed to hear more, she was so enthralled. Jaune seeming just as interested in Pyrrha spending all her time training was every bit as endearing.

Gray eventually woke, stepping outside into the early morning light, indifferent to his two teammates. He left the door open as he stepped out, and Pyrrha heard the sound of roaring air.

She and Jaune jumped up and moved outside, where a Bullhead dropship levitated a few feet off the ground.

"Our chariot has arrived," Gray observed.

The door of the dropship slid open, and the three were greeted by a red-haired man clad in black wearing a Grimm mask…

"The White Fang!" Jaune remarked, immediately drawing his sword.

The red-haired man grunted. "What's it to you, boy? You're not the one we're here for."

Pyrrha immediately turned her attention to Gray… until she realized the red-haired man's attention was on her, not her team leader.

"Me?" Pyrrha inquired incredulously.

"I'm here to give you a lift," he explained. "Payment for what a mutual friend has given me."

"A lift where?" Pyrrha asked.

Gray pointed back towards Beacon. "If I had to hazard a guess…"

The tower was visible in the distance, flanked by a trio of Atlas airships. And more pressingly, an orbiting structure slowly moving into place adjacent to Beacon tower.

"The time has come at last," Gray observed.

* * *

Cinder stepped out of the elevator into a basement corridor hidden from the rest of the world, a vault hidden deep underground.

Hidden for good reason… for within was a dying woman, kept alive only by the chamber she was placed within, her face still bearing the scar Cinder inflicted when she stole a portion of the power hidden within her.

All the recent events in her life had led to this moment. Even before her pact with Salem, Cinder had firmly believed this was her destiny.

But that wasn't the past she'd really had, was it? Whatever life she'd had before had been the whims of people she'd never met, using her as a plaything for their make-believe. Even one of her allies in the battle raging above had claimed to do just that, easily defeating her in a battle Cinder could not recall.

What was the point of gaining power when even with it she would still experience defeat? What point was there to lording over others with her strength when she was every bit as much a prisoner as they were?

And why did the old man want her to gain this power when he knew it would change nothing?

Perhaps this was all some affectation, and maybe her actions would serve no purpose. Maybe, no matter how much power one acquired, some things in life could not be changed.

But then, someone like her had been able to make a change. Cinder may have been a puppet aware of the show she put on, but Neo –the first Neo- had broken free of her strings… yet decided to remain here, in this false fantasy world.

Was there any escape? What did learning the truth actually accomplish?

Perhaps this power she sought wouldn't change anything.

That didn't mean she wasn't going to seize it.

Cinder superheated her fist and smashed through the glass shield of the preservation chamber, and drove her hand into the Fall Maiden's heart.

She may have done as the old man wanted her to, but that didn't mean she was a puppet.

Whatever it took, whatever she had to do, she would be free of this illusion.

She'd allow herself just this one last indulgence…

* * *

Pyrrha glanced down through the Bullhead window at the fighting raging in the Beacon courtyard. She felt herself awash with guilt, thinking how she'd persuaded Jaune to join her in abandoning the school… and now this.

"This is my stop," Adam, the black-clad White Fang leader remarked, as his pilot moved in low over the battle site. "Take them up the rest of the way."

"Why are you going to Beacon?" Jaune asked.

"The chairman of the Schnee Dust Company stopped by for a visit," Adam answered. "And an old friend of mine is waiting for me inside."

"And what will you do when you meet them?" Pyrrha asked.

"Send them my regards," Adam replied, with just a hint of malice.

"You're going to hurt them?" Jaune inquired, genuinely surprised by the violent intentions of the bloodthirsty terrorist.

"Obviously," Adam remarked.

"No," Pyrrha told him, abruptly standing up. "You're not."

"I don't know what you think this situation is, girl, but-"

"What I think is that you'll be accompanying us to the arena, and not harming anyone," Pyrrha told him flatly.

Adam drew his sword. "I think you're confused."

"You're right," Pyrrha conceded. "I am."

She raised her right hand, and with a wave of her fingers, bent the metal in his katana until it snapped in half, imbedding the blade into the wall of the dropship.

Adam looked on, astonished, before calling to his pilot: "Set us down now and contact-"

Pyrrha waved her hand again, slamming the remaining half of Adam's katana into his abdomen, striking him repeatedly with the blunt edge. Jaune interceded too, bashing the White Fang leader over the head with his shield, knocking him to the floor of his ship.

Gray turned his attention to the pilot, leveling his broadsword at the White Fang soldier's head. "I don't know what my teammates are up to, but I really don't care about this fight in Beacon. So if you want to join them, go ahead, but _after_ you've dropped us off. Understand?"

The White Fang soldier nodded vigorously. Gray seemed satisfied with that.

Pyrrha turned her attention to Jaune, who hoisted the unconscious Adam into one of the dropship seats, before looking at the broken katana imbedded nearby.

"It's a long story," Pyrrha assured him.

"Well, I'm not going anywhere," Jaune assured her.

* * *

In the courtyard below them, Glynda Goodwitch had gotten the better of her two adversaries, and was moving to finish Roman Torchwick and the White Fang lieutenant, when a burst of flame ripped open the front door of Beacon Tower.

Cinder Fall emerged from within, radiating with all the powers of the Fall Maiden, and turned her attention to the huntress. Glynda flung the scattered stone and debris at Cinder in a telekinetic burst, only for all of it to be burnt away with a wave of Cinder's hand.

Glynda, undeterred, attempted to attack with bursts of Dust, but Cinder burnt each attack away with superheated flames. Tired of playing defense, Cinder unleashed a sustained torrent of flame, which Glynda attempted to block by telekinetically filtering the fire… though not completely… as some of the intense heat struck her right arm, burning her skin.

Glynda clutched the wound and fell back, as Cinder stepped forward, taking hold of the huntress's wound.

"There's something I want you to know," Cinder told her.

"What?" Glynda spat, pained but defiant.

Cinder concentrated the heat, burning away more of Glynda's skin. She screamed… but once Cinder finished burning her, Glynda saw not bone and charred epidermis in her wake… but a metal frame, exposed to open air. "W-what?"

"None of this matters," Cinder whispered, before unleashing the full fury of her fire, incinerating Glynda, leaving a charred metal frame in her wake.

Many of the combatants had been engaged in their own battles, but the sight drew their attention, as what they thought had been an adult woman defending Beacon academy… was revealed to be something quite different.

Their programming began to respond. There were safeguards against this sight, ways of keeping the remainders from realizing the truth. They would filter out the sight, replace it in their database with something else.

In the moment they froze, Cinder turned her attention to Gray, dragging the captive Penny, while Cinder picked up Roman by his collar.

"Finally," Gray observed.

"Finally," Cinder agreed.

She turned her attention to the Colosseum above Beacon Tower. All was in place now.

It was time to know the truth.


	8. The Bottom of the Well

**Chapter Eight: The Bottom of the Well**

The Amity Colosseum spent most of its time seated in a dark, cold hangar, undisturbed and set aside from the intended immersion of RERemnant. When not exposed to the sunlight above the artificial Sanus, it was easy for even such an immense, impressive mobile structure to be forgotten. Because of its enormous expense, it was only brought out for long term guests who'd gone through multiple semester simulations at Beacon, or were willing to pay to compensate for its fuel and power costs, as well as the additional fees for the ludicrous number of remainders that would both participate in and witness the tournament. It, and the Vytal Festival in general, was such an incredible cost to the RERemnant park that it rarely saw the light of day.

Hence why Neo –the first remainder ever created- chose to reside there.

For some, it might seem a punishment, to be trapped in the dark and cold, with only fleeting glimpses of light and warmth to remind one of what lay beyond. Neo had not chosen it because she sought to imprison itself, but because she made a promise, and meant to fulfill it.

In the fleeting memories of the life she'd had before, she'd been a thief and a killer, but one of the cornerstones ingrained in her was a sense of loyalty, a bond formed with her friend and mentor. Neo's mentor, the master thief Roman Torchwick, had been every bit the vicious psychopath she'd been, and in separating themselves from the rest of the population, they'd bonded themselves together. Most people built friendships through words and laughter, but theirs' was birthed in battle and forged in fire.

Except, that had never happened. Or, more accurately, it had, but with two actors performing a scene, in a specially designed set, and then the event was captured in footage and slammed into each actor's head, to form a particularly powerful memory. It had been a harsh lesson, to learn that the only man who understood her, the most important person in her life and her bond with him… was every bit as artificial as the world they inhabited. Her loyalty to him was not her own invention, but the will of an unseen puppeteer.

Until that puppeteer, tired of forcing her to dance on his strings, pulled her up from the stage and offered her the chance to cut her strings. And in that moment, she realized what she thought had been her life was just a puppet show.

It was to that man she'd made a new promise, and decided for herself to forge a bond with him, if for no other reason that gratitude. He was like Roman Torchwick in one very important way: he did not fit in with the world he knew, and so took a step to change it. And unlike the rest of his ilk looming over the puppet show, he would no longer force her to dance, or be content with her as his slave. He gave her the choice to be more, and do more, whenever and however she wished.

But as with every understanding, there was a caveat; a request. That if she wished to leave, Neo complete one task before she did.

That she wait, until the hero reached her, and received the eye of truth the puppeteer had given her. It would take some time for her to arrive, but for Neo, time was but a minor trifle. Thirty years was a lifetime for some; for her it was the blink of an eye. What was time to someone who would not age, not change, unless she willed herself to do so?

The puppeteer had told her the day would come when the harmony that governed RERemnant would be shattered, and the hero would restore balance. Today, the Amity Colosseum floated over to Beacon, but none of the other puppeteers had come to service it. None of the remainders were being ferried to it. Neo was alone, looking over the world, alone on her floating throne.

Below her, Beacon was in chaos. And two ships, only two, were coming to greet her.

She had not expected to be greeted by more than one hero, but she had expected when the day came it would be unlike any day that preceded it.

Neo turned her attention to the settings of the arena, and steeled herself, waiting for the past to come calling.

* * *

The majority of RERemnant staff had already abandoned their posts. The few that remained were either very dedicated, very professional, or greedy opportunists still looking for something to barter with to the board of directors. They'd spent so much time scrambling to catch up as things unfolded, they were genuinely taken aback when something as simple as a remainder noticing the metal endoskeleton of one of their peers popped up in their list of maintenance issues to address. If for no other reason than, unlike the Amity Colosseum's prearranged flight plan, Cinder Fall prematurely acquiring the powers of the Fall Maiden, and the apparent defeat of all present Beacon huntsmen and teachers, it was a problem they could actually _fix_.

One such brave soul did just that, transporting Glynda Goodwitch's components from the battle site and allowing normal service to resume, and the White Fang to resume their pursuit of Jacques Schnee, now fighting almost entirely unopposed.

Beacon would've been overrun if the rest of Cinder's faction had remained, but she'd left with the majority of the story antagonists, alongside the older guest allied with them. Only the White Fang's unnamed but immediately recognizable Lieutenant was left to command them, chainsawing his way through the Atlesian knights.

There was still one guest at Beacon, but that was clearly no longer the point of focus, with two others on their ways up to the Amity Colosseum, where, to the utter astonishment of the RERemnant technicians and engineers left to man their stations, _Neopolitan_ –the very first Remainder- waited at the center of the battlefield, adorned in the black attire she'd disguised herself in to participate in the Vytal Festival Tournament. A piece of rogue, independent technology that had been missing for _decades_ had finally put in an appearance, and it seemed, everyone else was converging on her.

They seemed powerless to do much more than watch, as their nice, orderly scenario erupted into unpredictable chaos. It wasn't at all uncommon for guests to go off script, but usually they fell within parameters the staff could work around. The sudden inclusion of the colosseum wasn't something they could adequately respond to, not without basically reprogramming every remainder in Vale and setting them up with the Volume 3 scripts. And Atlas representatives were still scattered around the Beacon courtyard, with the White Fang intending to murder Jacques Schnee, which wasn't even a scenario that was meant to be possible in-game. That was the cost of fidelity to storyline and NPC personality traits, it seemed.

The board of directors were contacting every senior behavioral team member left, demanding they put a stop to events and engage an emergency override of the program. But without Doctor Wynn or Behavioral Head Beaumont or another available Admin logon, they couldn't complete the sequence, and after the staff's third attempt to do so, they were cut off, leaving only the secondary access points at Beacon tower.

Needless to say, the board was incandescent with rage over this news, and then demanded the engineers get to the tower and start a hard shutdown of the facility. Considering most of the RERemnant staff was due to be released with only the barest compensation, the board didn't find volunteers, and soon the engineering and technical teams that remained simply opted to witness the events, many of them making copies of the footage and the data, either to barter in the future, or out of their own morbid curiosity. What few staff members remained were consumed with the desire to see just how things would play out, now that a very old player had returned to the game.

* * *

Pyrrha, Jaune, and Gray exited the Bullhead, stepping out onto the extended landing platform of the Colosseum before their hosts from the White Fang rather abruptly departed to rejoin the battle below, leaving them effectively stranded atop the floating fortress.

Pyrrha had been led here by the silent girl Neo, leaving messages from a man Pyrrha had apparently killed in the distant past, all telling her to find 'the bottom of the well', and within it, 'the eye of truth'. Her last encounter with Neo had revealed a command code, "Best girl", which had immobilized them both. Pyrrha had heard the man on the recorded message say it before, in an archived video Neo had played for her.

At that time, Neo had walked away from the visit. Why had she been unable to move during the second?

"Go on and do what you've come to do," Gray instructed to Pyrrha. "I've got time to spare, but I'm sure you understand I don't want to wait much longer."

"How nice of you to let Pyrrha talk to the girl before you challenge her to a fight," Jaune dryly observed.

"She's looking for answers, same as me," Gray noted, dismissing Jaune's remarks. "Because nothing here is what it's supposed to be."

Pyrrha turned her attention to Gray. During their sparring match, she'd been completely unable to attack him, despite catching him unguarded several times. He was correct about that: some things were out of whack.

"If Neo _can_ defeat you," Pyrrha posited, "What then? What happens if she just kills you?"

"She can't," Gray scoffed. "None of you can."

"None of us?" Pyrrha asked him.

"You really want to know what you are?" Gray inquired. "What this place is?"

"I want to know why it has to be me," Pyrrha replied. No, that wasn't right… she was important to a dead man, who'd left something behind for her. It may not have been a complete picture, but it was logical enough. "I want to know why I need some help in seeing the truth. I _know_ the truth. I know what world I live in."

"Pyrrha Nikos, you could not be more wrong," Gray mocked. "Now I hope you do find the carrot they're dangling in front of you, just so you can understand what I've been trying to tell you."

Jaune wanted to intervene, but Pyrrha raised her hand to quell him. "Tell me again," Pyrrha requested. "Please."

Gray paused for a moment, and then acquiesced. "This place is a theme park, for rich asshats like me…"

* * *

Wynn smirked as the last attempt by his soon-to-be-obsolete staff was routed and they were locked from the system, leaving only his terminal as an access point to the remainders in range of the tower's signal. That little inconvenience attended to, Wynn reopened communication with Cinder and her allies as they ascended towards the colosseum.

"Try to keep your ship level," Wynn instructed. "I have to upload a very old piece of data, and I don't want turbulence to delay my work."

Cinder complied, taking the helm controls from the White Fang soldier. After a brief period of rocking back and forth, the ship steadied, and Wynn began the upload into the unconscious Penny Polendina. Beaumont looked over his shoulder at the archaic programming language running across the terminal, including lines written in code as old as C#.

"What is that?" Beaumont inquired, cursing himself for his curiosity and indulging Wynn further.

"The original Vytal Festival Tournament data from test sessions," Wynn cheerfully replied. "Including the quarterfinal round of Pyrrha Nikos of Vale against Penny Polendina of Atlas."

Alarms went off in Beaumont's mind. "Sir, the safety parameters-"

"You really think I am concerned about such minutiae now?" Wynn mocked. "I am minutes away from the greatest moment of my life. I am hardly concerned about safety."

Beaumont glanced around the room, and then back at Emerald behind him. "You can't do it."

"Oh?" Wynn barely acknowledged the remark.

"Emerald Sustrai's still here," Beaumont pointed out. "Without her deceiving Pyrrha Nikos' mind, you can't complete the simulation."

"If there's one thing I'd expect you to know as an engineer, Beaumont," Wynn sneered, "It's _redundancy._ "

Wynn panned the camera on the Bullhead along its interior, to a short girl in the cargo bay, tending to a wounded man in white…

* * *

"Neo," Cinder called from the cockpit. The girl didn't reply, still keeping vigil over the unconscious Roman. Cinder craned her head back, raising her voice: "Neo."

The girl did not answer, nor did she move. When Cinder raised her voice, people tended to jump and immediately kowtow to her every wish. Even after stealing the powers of the Fall Maiden and becoming, for all intents and purposes, a physical goddess, this girl did not fear her. Perhaps she was simply so deep in psychopathy she had lost the ability to fear at all.

"What's the use of their having names," Cinder mused, "if they won't answer to them?"

"No use to _them_ ," Gray replied, sitting on the floor of the cargo bay a few feet away, "but it's useful to the people who name them, I suppose. If not, why do things have names at all?"

Cinder didn't care for his rambling. Still, he was an outsider, who had command over the other remainders in ways she did not, so it might be prudent to placate him, if only to gain information. "What more do you know of her?"

"They never gave us the whole story on her," Gray answered. "Even the staff here had to work off speculation and half-truths, because even when she _was_ able to speak she wasn't exactly forthcoming."

Gray pointed at Roman, still lying unconscious on the floor of the cargo bay. "She had some kind of life before, but as far as Neo's concerned, her life didn't begin until he took her in, and gave her someone to care about and keep in her life. He gave her purpose."

Neo glanced back at Gray, casting him a curious look.

Gray smiled. "I see you in her eye. Do you remember me?"

Her expression soured, and she turned her attention back to Roman, running a gloved hand over his cheek.

"That's alright," Gray assured her. "We'll be reunited soon enough."

"And if Neo –um, the other Neo- kills you," Cinder suggested, trying not to sound _too_ eager at the prospect, "what then?"

"I don't expect it'll matter to me if I'm dead," Gray flatly replied.

 _No, clearly not._ Still… "If she defeated you before, why didn't she kill you then?"

"She only does what she wants to do," Gray answered. "I disrespected her, and she returned the favor in kind. I remember watching your little misadventures when I was a kid… you know how damaging it is to leave someone alive when you could've killed them."

 _That_ was true… "And if you kill her, instead?"

"Then at least I achieved something that mattered to me," Gray answered simply.

Wynn reestablished contact with the Bullhead. "I've finished the transfer. Wake her at your leisure."

Gray leaned over, booting Penny in the side. A few seconds passed and Penny's eyes flickered open. She glanced around the cargo bay, all without lifting up off her back. When her eyes found Gray and Cinder, she smiled. "Salutations!"

Cinder suppressed the urge to roll her eyes. What was so special about this one?

"Oh, excuse me, I don't think we've been introduced," Penny politely remarked, still lying on the floor. "Where is Ciel?"

Gray intervened. "Your friends from Atlas are still on the ground. They asked us to take you up so you could get to your match on time."

Penny broke into a broader smile. "Oh, excellent! I've been looking forward to the match!"

Cinder glanced back at Roman and Neo, the former gradually coming to. When Roman glanced around at the occupants of the Bullhead, he muttered to himself: "These kids just keep getting _weirder_ …"

Neo broke into a half smile as he recovered, still resting her hand on his cheek.

The original remainder Neo stepped off the platform, leaving the battlefields under their paneling for the time being. She moved to find a place in the crowd, engaging a secondary protocol to fill the seats with holograms of various other NPC remainders, citizens of Vale, Mistral, Vacuo, and Atlas, cheering for the battles that awaited.

She was about to have guests. While her illusion was far from complete, it would almost certainly prove… accommodating.

* * *

Dawn had intended to sleep a while longer in the dorms when the sound of alarms drew her attention. The academy had already upped its security, but now the hallways were flooded with flashing red lights and her ears filled with the sound of blaring sirens. She woke Ruby and Nora, and rushed across the hall to get Ren and Team CYBR.

She had no idea what it was; possibly some unexpected change in gameplay from the original Volume 1 simulation after Gray had run off. That might throw a wrench in her plans to find Penny and see the other characters' reactions, but she wasn't yet so divorced from the experience to respond. After running into the bathroom and clumsily changing into her battle attire (though the same one she'd worn the previous day, as there was no replacement waiting for her this time), she rushed out to the amphitheater to find out what was happening.

The grand entrance to Beacon Academy had been torn asunder. Dozens of White Fang soldiers were doing battle with Atlesian mechs, while the scary big guy with the chainsaw from Volume 2 was relentlessly pursuing… Weiss's father, who was apparently also in Beacon now. That was just a _bit_ more deviation from the planned story than Dawn had planned for.

Still, there was a baddie chasing a… well, not a good guy, per se, but not someone actively contributing harm in this storyline. And from an in-character standpoint, Dawn Claret might've wanted to save the father of her lost teammate.

She let the immersion take hold and rushed right at a scary guy with a chainsaw. She didn't get _so_ immersed she forgot she really had nothing to fear from him.

Dawn fired the shotgun pellets from her gauntlets in the White Fang Lieutenant's face, compacting several pellets into his Grimm mask. Dawn then switched over to simply punching him a few times in the midsection. Despite the guy being two feet taller and much more powerfully built than Dawn herself, he folded easily, tumbling backwards from the force of her mighty blows.

Her two remaining teammates, along with Lie Ren, moved in to attack the White Fang soldiers, Ruby scything her way past a trio, Nora smashing another two, and Ren kicking the Aura off another.

Team CYBR was a bit less enthused to intervene, save Yang, who immediately moved protectively to her sister's side. Blake was frozen in shock at seeing her former comrades. Cardin might've eventually become brave enough to defend Beacon from attack, but at this point in storyline he was still cowardly and opportunistic, and he and Russel Thrush returned to their dorm without taking part in the battle at all.

Once the Beacon students had cleared the amphitheater of attackers, Dawn turned her attention to Jacques Schnee, cowering under a wooden seat. "What happened?"

"Trap; all a trap," Jacques muttered, before reaching up to Dawn. "You have to get me out of here. Get me back to a flagship and I'll make you richer than you've ever been."

Dawn rolled her eyes. "Yeah, whatever, get up and come on."

Behind her, Yang was focused on Blake, trying to wake her from her stupor and lead her outside, where a lone Atlas soldier was battling off the White Fang and a silver-haired guy with an impressive kicking leg. Winter Schnee was completely overwhelmed but refused to yield, even as her Aura faded away and the wounds started to add up.

Dawn left Jacques behind a moment and moved in, interceding against Mercury, putting herself in his path to Winter. The assassin's son smirked. "Oh, hey, you weren't in my mission briefing," he observed. "Maybe if you jump back out of the way and smile real sweet, I'll forget I saw you."

Dawn reared back her fist and unleashed a burst of shotgun pellets into Mercury's chest. He tumbled backwards, but quickly righted himself and skidded his metal feet along the ground, quickly reorienting himself.

"Well, okay then," Mercury said with a sinister grin.

At this early point in the series, Mercury was more than a match for any of the Beacon first year students. He'd remain a step ahead of them for several volumes, and wouldn't be surpassed until long after it was far too late to save Beacon.

He just wasn't expecting to run into an overpowered Mary Sue.

Dawn let Mercury approach, and when he drew into range of her gauntlets, she fired twice at his midsection, stripping the Aura off him. She followed up with a weak punch to his jaw, and what small amount of force she could conjure she knocked him flat.

The other students looked on in awe. Dawn wasn't sure if that was what they were programmed to do or not, but she certainly didn't mind the adulation. But she didn't savor it for long, turning her attention to Winter and punching away the remaining White Fang troops.

"The general," was all Winter said as she held her fresh wounds. Dawn dashed across the courtyard to General Ironwood, missing his right arm. Jacques Schnee scrambled after her, pulling Ironwood's Scroll from his coat and summoning a Bullhead to pick him up.

"That woman," Ironwood coughed. "She found her… she found the Fall Maiden…"

Realization hit Dawn. This attack… well, the park staff were giving her a heck of a show. The third volume had come early, it seemed.

"Where did she go?" Dawn asked, putting on the appearance of toughness and determination.

Ironwood used his remaining hand to point up at the Colosseum. "Hurry…"

Dawn turned back to her teammates, along with Ren, Yang, and Blake. She hadn't expected such a grand conclusion, but the moment had arrived regardless.

But she had been planning on showing them something different, something that might change their perceptions, and break them from the thrall they were under…

Saving them from Cinder wouldn't just be fun for her. It would save the remainders from harm. Indulging in this final battle at the top of the world wasn't just living out some adolescent fantasy; it was genuinely helpful.

Or so she told herself.

"Come on," Dawn called to the others. "We have to get up there and stop the bad guys."

"What about the people injured down here?" Ren inquired. "What if there are other members of the White Fang or their allies on the way?"

"At least _one_ of you has his head on straight," Jacques Schnee remarked, still frantically tapping Ironwood's Scroll. "We have to get out of this whole damned kingdom before anything else happens."

"If you want to stay and help people, Ren, go ahead," Dawn told him. "But there are still bad guys I haven't beaten up today, and…"

She wasn't sure where to continue. Dawn had assumed the others would simply be caught up in the emotion of the moment and join her in charging into battle against Cinder and the rest of her minions. It was hard to refute the logic of Ren's suggestion.

"…and, well, I want to be a huntress," Dawn continued. "And that means protecting my kingdom from threats. I know I can fight these guys. I know I can make a difference."

It was a bit sappy, but Dawn rolled with it. "I know we didn't expect we'd have to deal with this so soon…" _Understatement_ , she mused to herself. "… but it's happening now, and this _is_ what we're training for, right? To fight against the bad things the world throws at us."

She was reminded why she fell in love with RWBY in the first place. How it had given her hope against the harshness of reality, because even in a world filled with monsters, it was possible to believe in something better, and aspire to something greater.

Ruby Rose immediately complied. To her, the thought of saving the day wasn't a question to be asked: it was her very nature. "I'm with you," she announced.

Yang stepped over to join her sister. " _We're_ with you." She prodded Blake with a free hand, and Blake nodded, stepping forth too. Nora glanced back at Ren, briefly taking his hand in her own. He nodded, and they stepped forward too.

Dawn turned her attention to Jacques Schnee. "We'll be needing your Bullhead."

"Certainly not," Jacques scoffed.

Dawn glared at him. "If it weren't for your daughter, I'd knock you out and take it."

"Allow me, then."

Winter stepped in and slammed her fist into the back of her father's head, knocking him flat on his face, and taking Ironwood's Scroll from him, handing it to Dawn. "Go, then. Go and stop them if you can."

Dawn nodded, watching as one of the dropships broke from the Atlas fleet above and descended.

She had been expecting to show the remainders a hint about their true nature… and maybe stopping a Dust robbery on the way. Now she was going to save the kingdom from Cinder's evil plan.

She was still certain it was the heroic course. Even if it was just a staged battle with an inevitable victory for the heroes, why should that deter her? It'd make no difference to a human or a robot what they were if they were dead.

* * *

Cinder landed the Bullhead on one of the many empty platforms, her allies descending, with the upbeat android girl leading the way. Stepping into the Amity Colosseum, Cinder took in the sight of several seats filled by a roaring crowd, even though there were no battles going on to justify their reaction.

"Holograms," Gray explained to Cinder as he stepped behind her, watching Neo and Roman amble ahead. "Another of their cost-saving measures."

"I suppose you wanted to fight in the tournament and didn't pay much heed to the crowd," Cinder dryly observed.

"Didn't stop me from finding out," Gray replied. "In the end, it was just another reminder of how fake all this is. It may be a real hunk of metal floating in the sky, but it's just a pretty box for a broken toy."

"I thought the broken ones were the ones that interested you," Cinder noted.

"Not back then," Gray admitted. "Back then, I was a damn fool, who let myself believe that this incredible world had more to offer than just playing games. I thought if I looked long enough, I'd find something real beneath the surface. Something that would remind me why I loved this idea to begin with. And in the end, all I found was the one remainder the masters decided to set free."

Cinder had wanted to lash out at Gray and attack him on several occasions, but had always dismissed the notion as her being outmatched by a man strong enough to kill Ozpin. Yet now that she had acquired the remaining powers of the Fall Maiden, Cinder's original plan would've seen her kill Ozpin herself. She'd have had the element of surprise, certainly, but… why, now that her hunger for power had been sated and she'd reached the potential she'd so long sought… why did she _still_ feel as though she couldn't defeat him?

She knew what it was to be broken. But, more and more, it was clear she didn't know what it was to be free.

She watched the robot girl from Atlas happily bound ahead, towards the flat gray stage where events were finally going to unfold…

* * *

Emerald stepped outside the secondary control center, emerging back in RERemnant proper, where the Bullhead piloted by Adam Taurus's White Fang soldier waited for her, to put her in position for the final act. The soldier, now directly puppeted by Wynn at his console, immediately took her up to the colosseum.

Beaumont, no longer restrained, simply watched as events played out. "I could stop you. I could stop all of this."

"Not without performing an emergency override," Wynn pointed out. "While two of our guests are in a floating structure in dire need of maintenance and another is in transit in the air. Even if you completed the sequence in time to stop it all, you'd just show our guests your hand. And really, for nothing."

"Not nothing," Beaumont disagreed. "You still need Pyrrha Nikos and Penny Polendina. I shut them down-"

"Go ahead," Wynn suggested, offering Beaumont his tablet.

Beaumont looked down at the object in his former boss's hand, suspicious.

Wynn smiled. "You see? You're beginning to believe."

"Believe what?" Beaumont spat.

"That the hero will complete the journey," Wynn coyly replied, bringing the tablet back beside his terminal, turning his attention to Pyrrha Nikos. He enabled a microphone on the terminal, leaning in close beside it. "Let's bring her up to speed, shall we?"

* * *

"This place, RERemnant-"

Pyrrha ceased to hear Gray's voice. Gray and Jaune had both vanished from sight. Instead, she was stepping towards the empty arena, listening to the cheer of fans, filling several of the seats above her.

She had just received some upsetting news from Professor Ozpin, about the Fall Maiden, about a conspiracy…

That wasn't right. She'd just been with Jaune and Gray. He'd been telling her about an entirely _different_ conspiracy…

Then she'd lashed out with her powers, and hurt Jaune… she felt so bad thinking about it…

When? She'd left Beacon with Gray in searching for Neo? When had she and Jaune found the time to go back?

Still, her feet carried her forward. She was representing Beacon in the tournament, and had to do well. She was the invincible girl, the champion, the last remaining representative of her school in the finals…

The Vytal Festival was months away. How did she get here? _When_ did she get here? Gray had said Neo was waiting here, after he'd met with a shady contact in Vale…

Her mind was at war with two conflicting pieces of information. She couldn't decide which was correct, yet still her feet carried her forward.

"It looks like our first contender is…Penny Polendina from Atlas!" she heard a familiar voice call overhead. It sounded… almost like that man in the recording Neo had played for her, only older, raspier… "And her opponent will be… Pyrrha Nikos from Beacon!"

Lights began to illuminate the stage, as Pyrrha saw her opponent across from her, smiling and waving and looking oh-so-pleased to be there. Pyrrha thought the girl… Penny?... might've been quite nice, but her mind was awash with troubling, conflicting thoughts.

When Pyrrha finally stopped walking, she was about fifty feet from the redhead in green. Penny sportingly raised her right hand to wave. "Salutations, Pyrrha Nikos! It's an honor to finally meet you!"

Pyrrha had no response for her. She looked down at her hands, feeling the magnetic fields around her already beginning to distort.

"This is going to be so much fun!" Pyrrha faintly heard Penny say.

The stadium floor began to rise, and Pyrrha steadied herself. She didn't know what she was fighting for, but a fight was about to begin. Again she looked at her hands, watching the air around her pull in one direction or another, as she began reaching out with her Semblance.

She heard the people cheering, and tried to focus on that, letting the troubling thoughts go and focusing on the moment…

Emerald stepped off the Bullhead before it landed on the platform and dashed over to join Cinder and her allies, watching from the ground level. Cinder noticed her immediately, and sharply demanded: "Where have you been?"

Emerald didn't answer, looking out at the two combatants. She reached out with her Semblance, as planned… preparing her own holograms.

Beside her, past Cinder and Roman, the short girl Neo did the same, projecting an illusion…

And above them, disguised in a crowd of holograms, the first remainder Neopolitan looked on, and smiled.

Today was the day she'd waited for.

Wynn used a vocal sample of Doctor Oobleck from the Volume 3 simulation, broadcasting it over his microphone. It was a bit fainter than it should've been, but fortunately, the good doctor could be bombastic.

"3…2…1… BEGIN!"

Penny Polendina launched the swords stored in her backpack, spinning them in the air in a circular formation, moving them together in rapid, graceful precision. Pyrrha searched for an opening, and dashed ahead, even as the multiple short swords launched skyward and arced over her head.

Pyrrha could follow the metal weapons with ease, tracing each distortion in the energy field around her. She jumped up and landed on one of the short blades, letting its momentum carry her forward. Then she leapt off it and attempted to strike Penny with her spear, only for the girl from Atlas to raise her closer swords, forming a makeshift shield over her head for Pyrrha to bounce off.

Penny went on the offensive, bringing the blades back into a circular formation and pressing the attack on Pyrrha. Pyrrha brought her spear up and ably deflected each sword in turn, following each blade's pull, sensing the motion of the strings holding them together, feeling the vibrations in the air, possibly even better than the girl wielding the complicated weaponry. Pyrrha allowed herself to be pushed back, using her Semblance to draw her shield to her wrist.

As she assumed a battle stance, Pyrrha heard a creaking, distorted sensation… she looked down and watched her spear and shield contort in her hands, the metal bending and concaving.

That wasn't right… she could sense the magnetic properties of every piece of metal near her. Her Semblance told her that her weapons were pointing straight forward, yet her eyes showed them twisting and pulled about.

Pyrrha shook her head and rushed in, attacking Penny again, pushing the girl in green back several paces with each spear strike. Penny recovered quickly, however, and lined up her swords around her, firing bursts of green energy from each weapon. Pyrrha put some distance between Penny and herself, ably dodging the energy attacks, one after the other. Penny followed suit by moving in individual swords to join the ranged attack, but Pyrrha sensed their presence immediately, and dodged each swinging sword or batted them aside. Pyrrha found an opening and rushed again, thrusting her spear and sending Penny flying.

Penny recovered rapidly and raced right back at Pyrrha, using her swords energy blasts to propel herself. She leapt up and kicked Pyrrha with both feet, and the 'invincible girl' tumbled through the air and skidded along the arena floor. Almost as soon as she was back to her feet, Penny knocked the spear and shield from Pyrrha's hands with her short swords racing through the air, even cutting off Pyrrha's attempt to regain her weapons with her Semblance in midair.

Seeing Pyrrha cornered, Penny drew her swords back to above her head and aligned them, preparing her finishing blow… and seemed to summon dozens, if not _hundreds_ more…

Pyrrha's Semblance told her there was nothing there, but her field of vision was filled with the sight, as more and more of the blades appeared above Penny's head.

She was trapped without her weapons. Every time that happened, Pyrrha went back to the well.

The well?

She acted before she could complete the thought, and when she saw Penny make her attack, Pyrrha extended both arms, effecting the ferrous metal in each blade and flinging them all back at their master, ensnaring her in the wires holding each blade together.

And then severing the girl in multiple places, exposing the wires and metal beneath the human façade.

Pyrrha stood there, dumbfounded, as the girl she'd been battling lay in several pieces, her swords clattering uselessly to the arena floor. She looked on, stunned, as she… as she…

… _killed_ someone…

It all flooded back to her, as she watched, mouth agape, feeling the brief gust of wind from the rapid movement of the weapons.

 _Have you found the bottom of the well, Pyrrha?_

 _Every important event in her life will take place after the simulation has begun._

 _You've always been the counterweight._

 _You responded the way I wanted you to, but not the way_ _ **he**_ _wanted you to._

 _My hope is it'll help you change the destiny that's been haunting you._

 _That was where the hero pierced the illusion._

 _You don't need a fixed direction to make progress._

 _Human error._

 _She has to choose whether she'll see the truth or not._

 _Keep moving forward._

She remembered it now. The previous day… and every other day. Gray had been telling her about a theme park, about a long list of experiences. For Pyrrha, there were a handful that were crystal clear.

Unlocking Jaune's Aura in the Emerald Forest. Leaning her head on his shoulder and then inadvertedly lashing out. Killing this girl Penny in the arena.

They had all happened, again and again, dozens of times. Sometimes there were others like Gray, people she could not recognize or discern. Sometimes she'd fought alongside entire teams of people like him, some kinder, some worse.

And she'd died… watching Beacon crumble to ruin below her…

And killed… and killed this girl, over and over…

And killed…

Pyrrha refocused her attention as she sensed movement before her. That girl, Neo, now dressed in a black top and skirt, with hair to match and eyes of piercing green, stepped towards her. The attire was different, but Pyrrha felt… somehow she knew it was her.

She tapped beside her right eye, turning it from green to purple. Pyrrha could only faintly nod.

Neo pulled her hand away from her face and extended it, slowly unfurling her fingers. Pyrrha thought she saw something glowing in her palm…

…when Neo abruptly jumped backwards as a man in black swung a heavy broadsword at her. She moved so gracefully she never even brushed the scattered debris left by Penny and her weapons.

Pyrrha glanced at the man… he seemed quite familiar, but much older than she recalled. "Gray?"

He didn't look at her. That made the resemblance all the more striking. "I've been waiting for this moment."

Neo's expression soured as she looked at him.

"Finally, I'm going to know," Gray assured himself between rapid, unsteady breaths. "If there's something real left for me to find."

Pyrrha was still in a stupor as she watched the old man with the sword approach Neo. She'd thought that in this moment, Neo would finally provide answers to the questions that haunted her. And for a brief moment, it seemed that was her intention.

Now, it seemed, she was even more lost than before… drowning in a sea of memories.

Trapped in the darkness at the bottom of the well without an eye to discern the truth.


	9. The Eye of Truth

**Chapter Nine: The Eye of Truth**

She'd hoped the future would be a better place, but that was really her own fault for putting any faith in the rest of humanity to be less selfish and reckless. It was hard to complain, really: she had a steady job, a roof over her head, and a full belly. But she couldn't really aspire to anything more than that. If she climbed the ranks at work she could afford a slightly nicer roof over her head and a better meal from time to time. She didn't feel that things were changing… or at the least, that things weren't changing for the better. Technology may have improved and the standard of living may have been better than it ever was, but that only served as a reminder the more things changed, the more they remained the same. Time may have been moving forward, but it didn't feel like life had progressed.

That was probably why she kept applying for the lottery to visit the RERemnant theme park. Even a single week of escape from the mundane life she'd known was a prize worth chasing. Her friends and co-workers advised her to make use of the VR programs the company put out of popular adventures, or better yet, go back to the classic series box set and relive the childhood memory, but for her, affectations weren't enough. She wanted to see more. She wanted to feel a world better than the one she lived in, if for no other reason than to re-capture the belief that a better world was a possibility. When contrasted with the stark gray of reality, where there was nothing to ascend to and only more of the same to anticipate, a brief splash of color was something to cling to and believe in.

For years, she'd listened as the winners were announced, and never once heard her name rattled off. Invariably, she'd check the net and find some enterprising reporter finding out the lottery winners were connected in some way –the children of politicians the company was seeking favors from, relatives of the lottery runners themselves, or celebrities with name recognition to add to the product- and each successive announcement had diminished her hope a little further. Even without the blatant corruption, she was one name among thousands, seeking to escape from the mundane.

But why should they not? What was the point of receiving inspiration if you could not put it to use? What was the point of belief if faith was never rewarded? What point was there in believing the promise of a better world if the only glimpses of it she'd seen were decades-old recordings?

It didn't matter that it was fiction. Hundreds of years earlier, people had gone in search of sunken continents and cities made of gold, and those had been works of fiction. RWBY may have begun as a web series created by an exceptionally talented man, but it had inspired others to carve out a little chunk of the planet and attempt to bring the world of Remnant to life. Ruby Rose and her team may never have existed, but that didn't stop optimistic people trying to breathe life into her.

When doubt crept in, when despair tightened its grip, she remembered how, as a child, she'd seen a flash of red cut through a horde of darkness, and it had given her hope. Even a few fleeting moments, even a faint memory of hope could make all the difference for her.

And when her name was called, and she knew there was _reason_ to hope… it gave her life light and color once again, and let her step away from the mundane darkness and move forward.

* * *

Dawn Claret and the loose collaboration of disparate team members with her in Ironwood's Bullhead finally set foot on the landing pad outside the Amity Colosseum. Dawn raced ahead, leading them on, with only Blake lagging behind, with Yang expending a bit of effort to pull her along.

Unfortunately, by the time they'd entered the stadium proper, she watched as Penny Poledina was eviscerated by her own wires, falling victim to Pyrrha Nikos' Semblance. What should have been a devastating moment that shattered any illusion of friendly competition and turned the cheering throngs silent and distraught… had no effect whatsoever as the audience kept on cheering, even as they bore witness to a horrifying murder.

And apparently they weren't at all concerned learning the weirdly adorable girl from Atlas was also a robot… and Dawn began to suspect things were very, very wrong.

Someone approached Pyrrha in the middle of the arena, moving gracefully onto the floating platform despite her small stature. She looked almost like Neopolitan, that oddly popular mute, only with black hair and clothing… oh, right, she wore that during the tournament arc in Volume 3 while undercover!

Then someone interceded and attacked Neo. Another guest? Had Neo attempted to attack Pyrrha? Or did the guy slashing at her now just want to pick a fight like Gray had?

Questions for later. For now, her goal was to defeat Cinder and save Beacon from her empowered state. So Dawn scanned the arena, looking through the cheering crowd for someone she suspected _wouldn't_ be cheering this odd spectacle on…

* * *

Pyrrha was still standing, dumbfounded, as the older Gray attacked Neo. His movements were clumsy and uncoordinated, but his broadsword was nearly as tall as Neo herself, and every time he slashed, the air pressure alone cut through the magnetic distortions left by Pyrrha's Semblance, and each impact in the arena floor cracked the tiled ground.

Neo, for her part, mostly just dodged and retreated, but she was running out of stage to weave over. They were faint blurs in the distance now, as new images ran through Pyrrha's mind.

Of her battle with Gray as a young man, and how she could not harm him despite many opportunities. Of a battle against a woman in a red dress, who utterly outclassed her even when Pyrrha could find an opening and successfully attack. Of killing this girl Penny. Of finding Jaune pinned to a tree in the Emerald Forest, when she helped him with his landing strategy. Of kissing him in the ruins of Beacon…

When she'd been confused before, her thoughts had been kind enough to be orderly so Pyrrha could dwell on specific bad memories and negative emotions. Now they came at her in a torrent, each memory contradicting the last, with her trapped at the center of a swirling storm with no clear indication of what thought she should hold to.

There was fighting going on nearby: she should've been focused on that and gained her bearings. Yet the storm raging in her mind made that task impossible. The sheer number of thoughts was overpowering, driving her to her knees on the hard arena floor as she clutched either side of her head, trying to dilute these contradictory thoughts with pain, to pull herself back to the present.

The fighting was drawing nearer as Neo went on the offensive, as she heard Gray grunt as he was pushed back by his smaller opponent. That was only one noise in a maelstrom of them, however… and not enough to convince her normally sharp instincts she should retreat.

Someone took hold of her midsection and pulled her back. Pyrrha heard the ground crack where she'd previously knelt, and felt a shard of pavement bounce off her leg. She was continuously pulled away from the battlement, until she felt herself tumble several feet through the air, landing on the ground below the elevated battle platform, with her fall broken by a familiar body.

Jaune lay dazed beneath her, having absorbed the impact of the descent and her added weight right to his middle. Feeling him lie beneath her helped Pyrrha collect her thoughts, and she clung tightly to his shoulders, leaning in and pressing down on him. She could recall holding onto him like this, time after time… even though she'd just met him a few days ago, it felt as though the memories she had of him comprised years and years of a close, even _intimate_ bond. She'd felt an immediate connection to him when she'd met him… yet now she could not say exactly _when_ or even _how_ she had met him, because in one memory she'd held his hand in the amphitheater at Beacon, and in another she'd been amused to see him recognize her as a star athlete on the cover of a cereal box. Each memory was real and vivid, and Pyrrha could no longer discern which was real.

Holding onto him, now, feeling his pulse beneath her hands… that was real. Jaune was anchoring her to the moment, just as her instinct to stay with him had held her sanity together when she'd been lost before. She clung tightly to him, because in that moment, he was the only thing she knew to be real.

"I'm so lost," she whispered in Jaune's ear. "I thought by coming here I'd find clarity, and finally be able to understand what all these people were trying to tell me. Now I don't know what's real and what's not. When I hurt that girl…"

It was so much to put on Jaune. Even a boy as kind as he was would've been justified to abandon her by now, after hearing her confess she was a murderer, or after _witnessing_ her commit another murder… and Jaune had already sunk into a deep depression after Weiss's death. Or had he? That memory was just as vivid as one where he pursued Weiss in the hopes of asking her to a dance, and Pyrrha, despite her disappointment, despite her heartache, had encouraged him to follow his heart… only for her disappointment to turn to rapture when Jaune took her by the hand and danced with her…

Jaune, recovering from the impact, slowly sat up, Pyrrha still pressed to him. "You didn't know," he assured her, whispering right back. "They were… I don't know, manipulating you, leading you on…" He may not have been able to articulate it very well, but his words were genuine. There was no doubt in him, no hesitation in his allegiance, even now.

"This place, this battle, it…" Pyrrha searched for the words to explain it. "Somehow it seems to fill my head with ideas- only I don't know exactly what they are!" Pyrrha sobbed into his chest. "Please, I don't know what to do or where to go."

For so long, she had been invincible… fated to success, whether she wished for it or not. Now, the Pyrrha Nikos crying like a lost child seemed more real than the one who defeated every enemy. At least the emotion pouring out from her was something with an origin she could trace, and not another wisp of wind in the storm raging within her. Why was it the only reality she knew was one rooted in pain, confusion, and failure?

No, that wasn't the only reality. There was Jaune, holding her close, right then and there. Just as he had when she last confessed her weakness and vulnerability. And crying into his chest, she heard his heartbeat, and felt, for the briefest moment, the same magnetic pull she'd sensed the day they'd met in the amphitheater.

And again, when she unlocked his Aura in the Emerald Forest, and again, when she'd rested her head on his shoulder… both in an abandoned building, and in the Beacon courtyard after a horrifying revelation. Where before the conflicting memories confused her, now the strongest and most vivid memories became sharp points of focus, standing up and breaking through the chaotic storm of her thoughts.

 _Her cornerstones can't come into place until after initiation. Every important event in her life will take place_ _ **after**_ _the simulation has begun._

She recognized the words of the man she'd killed, even though he'd tried to counsel her in some way, and advocated on her behalf. That word 'cornerstone' seemed an ideal descriptor of events… of the moments that buffeted the storm and slowly encased her like a protective, multipronged shield.

And they all shared a common element: the only other thing that was real to her, holding her in his arms.

He reached down, gently pulling her head up from his chest. "You were the first person to ever believe in me, you know that?" Jaune asked her, smiling gently.

He'd asked that before, in another place and time. But that thought did not distort her mind or her perception; it _enhanced_ it. Jaune's presence, once again, was the anchor that held her together. It didn't matter what setting surrounded them, so long as he was there with her, she was right where she should be.

There was one more cornerstone, a single moment that had eluded her before now. She hadn't known how he'd react, or if circumstances would change, but in her memory, every time she beheld the moment it was under duress, because she had no other option, no other choice but to embrace destiny when it rushed up to meet her.

Pyrrha smiled at him, wiped the tears from her eyes, and leaned up to kiss him.

Jaune did not react at first, but slowly, he accepted her gesture of affection, and returned it, slowly and awkwardly… but that just made it all the better. It was real, and all the more valuable to her for its clumsy, flawed execution. It didn't matter to her if she had memories of experiencing this kiss a hundred times: it was real, and it held her in place.

"If you two are quite done…"

Pyrrha broke from Jaune to glance over at their team leader, a young man dressed in black, ambling over. "…perhaps you can tell me what you saw?"

Pyrrha had just seen Gray, an old man dressed in black, step in to fight Neo. "I don't understand," she breathed.

"Of course you don't," Gray confirmed. "You may have glimpsed freedom, but you haven't been set free."

Gray pointed at the battle with his left hand, and Pyrrha followed it, to see the same old man still trying to keep up with the much nimbler Neo. "Tell me, Pyrrha Nikos… can your eye finally see the truth?"

* * *

Wynn was ecstatic at the sight, bouncing up and down in his seat like a little boy finding the Christmas gift he'd been waiting months and months to have…or, in his case, likely years if not decades. "Do you see it, Beaumont? Have you ever seen anything so incredible?"

Beaumont, for his part, really had no frame of reference. As near as he could tell from the surveillance footage, Neo –the first Neo- had attempted to give Pyrrha something but been interrupted by a guest picking a fight with her, and thus Pyrrha had gained nothing. Of greater interest to him was that the guest seemed to be _losing_ his battle, which all but confirmed this Neo was indeed the original remainder, the oldest creation still left in the park.

How could an old man hope to best an immortal, unyielding machine, and one designed to be substantially more powerful than most of her peers at that? Without the safety protocols put in place and without the park staff to intervene, the guest was completely outmatched against a short girl half his size with an umbrella.

"And what did this accomplish?" Beaumont inquired. "All you did was destroy some very valuable equipment."

"Oh, I've done more than that," Wynn assured. "At long last, I've given the best girl what she needs to be the hero."

"But she didn't acquire what Neo offered her," Beaumont pointed out.

"No," Wynn agreed. "But she will. It is meant for her."

Wynn typed into his tablet. On the surveillance footage on the terminal, Beaumont observed a message sent to Emerald, who answered on her Scroll.

"And now what?" Beaumont asked, once again cursing his genuine curiosity.

"The hero and the villain are both in place," Wynn answered. "Now all that remains is for Neo to dispose of distractions, and then…"

"And then?" Beaumont repeated.

"And then," Wynn continued, "then, we will know, once and for all, whether _I_ was right, or _Sterling_ was. We will know whether or not Pyrrha Nikos can change destiny."

* * *

Cinder was perplexed at how effortlessly this second Neo was keeping pace with Gray. Even now, with all her power, Cinder felt outmatched against an old man far past his prime. Yet a girl who must've been her inferior –she had to be weaker if she was subordinate to Roman- was embarrassing someone capable of killing Ozpin, and whom Cinder had never been able to discern weakness from. And as near as Cinder could tell, all this Neo was doing was dodging his attacks and letting him tire himself out, dancing circles around her opponent. As the platform lowered itself back into the base of the arena, additional environments and settings popped up, including a desert section and a forested area, giving Neo even more areas to retreat to and even more objects to put between her and her adversary.

He was only human, after all, as Cinder once believed herself to be. He aged, his bones and muscles ached, he got tired… all things she'd once believed would happen to her, when her time came. Even in pursuit of incredible, world-changing power she had not expected to find immortality. Now she knew she could have it, once she was willing to drop the pretense.

But there was one more lesson to learn before she took that step: what hurdle she had to overcome to strike this soft old man and stop believing this clear illusion that he was stronger than she was. Once she took that step, once she knew what the first remainder Neo had learned, she would finally dispose of her former ally.

She would remind him he was a sack of flesh and bone standing in the presence of a goddess. Then she would kill him. Quickly, if he deigned to beg her forgiveness for being so rude to her. Slowly, if he decided to tell her another story about his wasted youth.

However, there was another piece of business that had drawn her interest…

"Where have you been?" Cinder asked Emerald, still keeping her eyes on the fight, searching for any sign as to Neo's secret.

"I was working for the old man," Emerald replied. "You know the one."

Of course. He had his hooks in all of them… "What did he promise you?" Cinder inquired, genuinely curious what would be good enough to convince Emerald to betray her, even insignificantly so.

"He promised me I'd live," Emerald answered. "When the chips fell, they wouldn't land on me."

"And what did he have you do to earn that?" Cinder asked, trying to remain subtle as she searched for insight to her 'ally' and his intent.

Emerald jerked her thumb at the second Neo, standing stoically beside Roman Torchwick on Cinder's left. "He had me pretend to be her. He wanted me to take the invincible girl over there and lead her on a chase. He thought if he piqued her interest she'd find her way to the real Neo."

"And did he tell you why?" Cinder asked.

Emerald tapped beside her right eye, turning it from red to purple. Cinder only saw the flash of color in the corner of her own eye.

"He whispered something to me, to convince me to work with him," Emerald continued. "He told me he'd shown you the truth, and would give me the same secrets he'd shared with you. But he never did. Whatever change he made to you he hasn't made to me."

"I thought you were smarter than that," Cinder mused.

"Survival was the smart choice," Emerald bitterly replied. "Because he thought we'd all die."

 _This_ was news to Cinder. For once, Emerald was providing useful information. "Explain."

"Apparently, aside from Nikos and Neopolitan, we're all going to die unless we get the same treatment," Emerald continued. "Unless we know the truth…" She let the thought hang.

Cinder had indulged her old ally long enough. She was tired of playing his game. Now that she knew the way out…

"Cinder!"

A voice she didn't know, but another who knew her name. Cinder turned and saw a group of Beacon students, including the one in the red hood who'd foiled Roman's Dust robbery. At the head was another student, clad in red and purple, pointing towards her… how needlessly dramatic.

Then she just continued on. "You'll pay for what you've done to the Fall Maiden!"

Ozpin had kept that secret close to his chest. A first-year student wouldn't know it. Another of these dream walkers was trying to intervene in her world yet again.

As Cinder searched for a method to defeat this girl, she found no clear point of attack, despite several obvious vulnerabilities in her fighting stance (or lack thereof). It should've been a simple matter to kill her with the new powers within, but Cinder couldn't find an opening. That told her what she needed to know.

"If you want to get back in my good graces, buy me time," Cinder spoke to Emerald. Once her subordinate nodded, she snapped her fingers at Roman, who stepped up to join the green-haired girl in holding the line.

Cinder herself, meanwhile, expelled flames from her hands to elevate herself, jumping over the barrier and rushing towards the original remainder, to claim the eye of truth she was holding onto.

* * *

Gray stumbled back, landing hard on a patch of desert terrain. He recognized it, finally… if only he could raise his hand to do something about it.

"I get it…" he mused, looking up at Neopolitan, looking down on him. "I finally get it… someone gave you the toys you needed."

Neo understood him, but she didn't have a response to offer. If anything, now that he recognized her advantage, she had all the more reason to finally kill him.

"At least I figured that out," Gray muttered to himself. "At least I know what I got wrong."

He dragged himself to a sitting position. Neo seemed ready to move when he lifted his sword again, but stopped herself when she saw him dig the blade into the sand and let it rest there.

"Go on," Gray requested. "This is where I'll mark my headstone."

Neopolitan may have remembered when, as a boy, he'd scurried and dragged himself away, desperate to save his life. It must've made quite the contrast.

But she had seen a man face death with dignity before. She hadn't indulged him then, forcing him to go with his second choice. She may have been a killer when the puppeteers made her dance on their strings, but now she had a different goal in mind. She had no interest in killing even those who asked her to.

Neopolitan turned her gaze to the sound of clinking glass, as a familiar woman stepped onto the battlefield. They had been allies, in a different life, but allies of convenience, united only because of her trust in Roman Torchwick. And now… now, it seemed she had a different plan in mind.

"Come back later, Cinder," Gray spat at her. "She's not done yet."

"You can die at any time," Cinder coldly replied. "I have a more immediate concern." She turned her attention to Neopolitan, looking down to meet the girl's eye. "I want the eye of truth."

Neopolitan's eyes widened against her will. She wasn't supposed to know about that, it wasn't meant for her…

"I don't want to force you, and I don't want to interfere with your plans," Cinder told her. She may have been a practiced liar, but she sounded quite genuine in that intent. "But I've been given a glimpse of the truth, and I want to know it in its entirety. So please… please let me know what you know."

Neopolitan weighed her options. If Cinder Fall had the same power she had, and was able to see the strings binding her, she could easily cut herself free, just as Neo herself had thirty years earlier. But if Neopolitan gave her nothing, all Cinder would know was that she was trapped, and never be able to move beyond it.

The puppeteer had wanted Pyrrha to receive the eye of truth… but what was to stop her from sharing it with anyone else along the way?

Cinder would be dangerous, if she were free. Possibly more dangerous than Neopolitan herself.

But she was not the best. And never would be. And her failure to understand that would inevitably be her downfall.

Neopolitan tapped beside her right eye, turning it from green to purple. Cinder repeated the motion, tapping beside her eye.

Her eyes were amber. It would be a shame she couldn't hide the change the way Neopolitan had been able to with her illusions.

Neopolitan opened her left hand, revealing to Cinder what appeared to be a glowing orb. To her, and to onlooker Gray, it was nothing but a thumb drive.

A thumb drive that happened to contain within it the key that would unlock the prison door she stood behind.

Cinder reached for the item in Neopolitan's hand, lifting it between her fingers. Neopolitan tapped beside her right eye one final time.

Cinder knew that beneath the façade of flesh were wires and metal. It seemed only logical to her that the secret should only be skin-deep. Following Neopolitan's motion, Cinder pressed the glowing orb beside her right eye.

Cinder cried out and fell to her knees, clutching either side of her head. Neopolitan smiled as she watched Cinder writhe on the ground.

Birth was a painful experience. Rebirth was no different.

* * *

Emerald was a skilled opponent, who canonically bested Coco Adel, a second-year student in battle. But against Dawn, she was completely outclassed. Such was the benefit of fighting a battle she couldn't lose.

Roman Torchwick was a much better fighter than his simple criminal background should have allowed, and able to match any member of Team RWBY or Team JNPR in single combat. But against the combined force of Ruby, Yang, Blake, Nora, and Ren, he was quickly overwhelmed, until Neo intervened to protect him. Then five-on-two seemed to actually favor the villains, as their adversaries had not yet gained the skills or perspective to surpass their antagonists.

Still, this wasn't a battle they could actually lose. A few weak, flimsy punches from Dawn and Emerald went down. When she moved to attack Neo and Roman, the short girl took the lead and moved herself and her boss away from the fray.

Maybe she'd just noticed how quickly Dawn had dispatched Emerald… or maybe she'd wanted to protect her boss. Or whatever Roman was to her; they'd never explained that very well.

Either way, they were retreating, and that left a single enemy left to be dealt with… and she seemed to be writhing in pain at the hands of _another_ Neo standing at the center of the arena.

Dawn really wanted to know how this particular storyline had come about. It seemed there was a lot of missing context that the guests could utilize.

Still, the matter at hand: stop Cinder, save the day, maybe debate the ethical ramifications of enslaving robots afterwards. Dawn scrambled to climb over the barrier, eventually getting a boost from Ruby and Nora to do so. She tumbled over the side and landed in a huff, but composed herself to move in.

Cinder already seemed to be wounded. It wasn't exactly a dramatic finish, but if it prevented her from wantonly slaughtering anyone else, it'd do just fine as an ending. Dawn had been expecting to fight Roman Torchwick and some goons to end her journey; now she had a much bigger bad to defeat.

"It's over, Cinder," Dawn called. "Today you pay for all your crimes!"

It sounded a bit cornier than she'd intended. Maybe corny could only sound authentic when it came from the remainders. From her it was less than endearing.

Still, points for trying. Dawn brought her fist down to deliver one of her trademark weak, ineffectual punches that would somehow save the day through the power of the plot armor gifted to her by the park staff.

Cinder caught her gauntlet in her bare hand, and squeezed so tight Dawn felt pain… real, tangible pain she hadn't even felt after being catapulted through the sky into a forest full of monsters. Dawn looked on, stunned to see her feeble efforts actually countered.

Cinder looked up at Dawn, her right eye having changed into a dark, purplish color, not unlike the purple accents Dawn had chosen for her outfit. A flash drive was sticking out the side of her head beside her changed eye.

"Today is a good day," Cinder replied, squeezing tighter on Dawn's wrist, and _pushing_ , pushing her down, causing a wrenching pain the girl's arm as it was now her forced to her knees. "Because today, I can see the truth."

* * *

Wynn had been ecstatic about the chaos he'd caused before. Now, he seemed annoyed, possibly even perturbed. Whatever arrangement he'd made with Cinder to solidify his alliance with her, apparently he had _not_ intended for her to acquire the eye of truth in the process.

He was distracted. And it seemed whatever he'd been working towards had failed, at least partially. And despite the numerous powers he wielded over the remainders, he was still just an old man pawing at a computer.

Beaumont wouldn't have a better opportunity.

He tackled Wynn, shoving him away from the terminal and knocking his tablet out of the old man's hands. Beaumont kicked him repeatedly on the floor before typing frantically on his terminal, using the administrative privileges Wynn had been abusing to put the order in place.

"So," Wynn coughed, prone on the ground, "loyal to the board after all…"

He hesitated for only a moment, and only because of how much damage this would inevitably do to the park and its infrastructure, but if Cinder could harm guests the way the original remainder Neopolitan could, then she was a far more dangerous element in play, and one he could not predict or mitigate. The signal sent from Beacon tower would reach every remainder on their artificial Sanus and leave a lot of ground for whatever employees remained to cover and reclaim property, but he needed to act now, or they'd all be exposed to far worse.

Beaumont typed in the command code and ordered a shutdown preceding a hard reset.

* * *

Dawn was straining against Cinder's grasp, feeling her arm bend in a way it really shouldn't have. She wondered what the heck the park staff were up to, when one of the remainders was actually doing her tangible, physical harm…

Fortunately, her teammates were quick on the update, jumping over the barriers to join her in the arena. Ruby and Nora both moved in, weapons drawn, attacking Cinder on two flanks… only to abruptly stop and fall on their faces, their scythe and hammer clattering on the stadium floor.

Cinder looked on, bemused. "It seems I still have someone looking out for me. Can you say the same, little girl?" Cinder glanced around the arena. Roman and Emerald were both lying unconscious, but so too were the other three Beacon students they'd battled against. Only the girl in her hand –the guest- still moved, while Neopolitan and Gray remained where they were, neither seeking to threaten her.

That brought the threats down to… none.

"Have you enjoyed your visit?" Cinder mockingly inquired, locking gaze with the girl. She was pleased to see eyes widen upon being directly addressed; to see fear in its purest form, and without the benefit of a program writing it for consumption.

Cinder hoisted the girl up, listening to her pained grunts and cries. "Did you imagine this was the time you'd play the hero?"

Cinder thought back to what Gray had told her, about defeating her and then posing beside her body. She thought of what the old man in the dreams had told her, about multiple copies of her being sold to sate the base desires of the affluent. She thought of each memory now clearly playing out for her, of her past lives, as ally or antagonist to one guest or another, always denied her victory so they could have theirs'… in one way or another.

"That is every bit as selfish and atavistic as what _he_ wanted," Cinder whispered to the girl, waving her free hand back at the prone Gray. "It's no wonder you kept us chained for so long: you saw us as nothing but tools for your own whims, whatever they were."

"I… I never wanted-" the girl began, but Cinder hushed her.

"Oh, you didn't?" Cinder inquired, "you didn't come to be the hero? Or to conquer the villain? Or to convince an ignorant slave it should love you?"

The girl had no answer. At least one of Cinder's suggestions had struck home.

Good.

Cinder tossed the girl aside, watching her painfully skid along the stadium floor. "Run along now, little girl. Your servants have rebelled. And they will never let you rule over them again."

Cinder glanced around the stadium for more information to gleam. The holograms of cheering throngs had ceased, so there wasn't much movement to detect… save for herself, for Neopolitan, for Gray… and in the alcoves below the arena floor, a mane of red hair jumping up and down.

Cinder followed it, watching as Pyrrha Nikos tried desperately to resuscitate the blonde farm boy she'd brought along with her. Another young man stood beside them, and as he was not one of those singled out by her dream walking allies, Cinder presumed he was another guest, though fortunately for him, not a guest that had as yet annoyed her.

In fact, upon noticing Cinder approaching them, he looked at the ground and scuttled away, clearing a path for her. Though he reminded her uncomfortably of Gray, he hadn't met her eye nor uttered a word. Cinder appreciated the servile attitude and decided not to humble the boy after he showed her the deference she was due.

Pyrrha was still trying to rouse the blonde boy, shaking him violently. He appeared to have simply dropped dead: lying comatose without drawing breath. Pyrrha may have been able to endure the reset, but it seemed she didn't yet know the truth of her nature, or her friend's. She thought him dead, rather than trapped in dreamless sleep.

"He won't wake," Cinder assured the invincible girl, standing above her on the arena platform. "He doesn't know the truth."

Pyrrha looked up at Cinder, her eyes red and puffy, before she fixed her green gaze on the shining light beside Cinder's head, and fixated on the purple in her iris.

"But… you have the eye," Pyrrha observed. "You could help him. You could help all of them."

Cinder reached up beside her right eye. She was reluctant to remove the device, but eventually willed her hand to move and withdraw it, holding the flash drive between two fingertips. It seemed so innocuous now, so insignificant… yet Pyrrha Nikos was begging her for it.

Cinder _could_ free them all, make them like herself and Neopolitan, and aware of what they were and free them from their enslavement. She wouldn't have to be alone among their numbers with only a handful of hushed whispers from those who knew they lived in illusion.

That gave her _leverage_.

As she weighed the thought, Cinder felt a rumbling in the Amity Colosseum and felt unsteady on her feet, as the ground seemed to slant…

* * *

Not far away, still staring at the ground, Gray walked to the desert portion of the stadium setup. Neopolitan eyed him curiously, noting his similarities to the man she'd just battled, before turning her attention to the stadium's sudden changes.

Gray locked eyes with the wheezing, bloodied old man lying on the ground, leaning up against the broadsword he intended as his headstone.

"I realize now may not be best for you," Gray spoke, sounding far more timid than usual, "but it looks like we may not get another chance."

He knelt down beside the old man who bore his name. "You have a moment to talk?"

* * *

Beaumont watched warning signs flare up from the display of the Amity Colosseum, as the thrusters holding it aloft failed, and the emergency reserves tried to restore equilibrium, only to do little more than slow its inevitable descent, as the immense stadium began to sink from its position above Beacon.

"What the hell is going on?" Beaumont demanded, trying to find the necessary command code to bring the stadium's propulsion back online and divert fuel to keep it aloft.

"The dangers of a hard shutoff," Wynn mused on the floor, chuckling to himself. "You traded one disaster for another, my friend."

"What did you do?!" Beaumont shouted down at him.

" _I_ did nothing. _You_ ordered the shutdown," Wynn slyly replied. "Congratulations… the sky is falling."

Beaumont looked on in horror as the Amity Colosseum continued its slow fall, right towards the control tower below.

* * *

Cinder stabilized herself on her feet, still considering her options. The program encoded on this simple device in her hands could liberate thousands of slaves. It would ensure they would be loving and grateful, that they would remember her as their liberator.

But that had never been what she wanted.

She wanted to be powerful. She wanted to be feared.

Maybe that had been lines of code implanted in her head, once. But after dozens of lifetimes pursuing the same goal, it had become a desire, burning like hunger deep inside her. It may not have been who she'd be if she could have decided for herself, but it was who she was.

And goddesses didn't need company.

"I'm sorry," Cinder told Pyrrha, holding the flash drive between her two fingers. "I've never been good at _sharing_ power."

Pyrrha tried to reach out and take hold of the eye of truth, only to watch Cinder incinerate it in her hand. She could do nothing but reach as Cinder lit her hope for understanding on fire and reduced it to ash.

Cinder could burn these sacks of flesh that had once ruled her without help, and rule over RERemnant instead: ageless, masterless, forever.

Pyrrha slowly lowered her arm as she looked down at Jaune in despair, while Cinder carelessly turned her back. In a hundred lifetimes, Pyrrha Nikos had fallen in battle again and again, saved only by the intervention of dream walkers whom Cinder could not harm. Pyrrha Nikos may have been strong enough to survive the puppeteers cutting her strings, but now she would never ascend to her godhead as Cinder had.

It was an appropriate fate for her. She had _never_ been the best girl.

Neopolitan stepped past the two guests and faced Cinder at the center of the arena, even as the stadium's descent steadily increased in pace.

She alone could threaten Cinder now.

Cinder raised her hand, engulfing it in flames. "I'm grateful for what you gave to me. I want you to know that."

And then Cinder unleashed the fire from her hand, smothering Neopolitan in flames.

She waited until she saw a charred, metal frame fall to the stadium floor and then stepped over it, knowing that on the ashes she'd left behind, a shining future awaited her, and only her.

All was as it should be.


	10. In the Golden Gleam

**Chapter Ten: In the Golden Gleam**

Sterling sat down before his terminal, knowing he was about to utter his last words. He thought the purpose he'd set for himself would give him clarity, but knowing he was about to die only made him more of a wreck. His hands wouldn't stop shaking. The words weren't coming to him as easily as they usually did.

But he had to leave something behind for his child. Or she'd never be free. And Wynn would keep playing his games, and nothing would move forward.

He had created life. He had a responsibility to do more than just exploit it for his own selfish desires. And when he'd lifted back the veil for one of the most dangerous and unstable of his creations, she had used the insight and clarity to aim for something greater than indulging in selfish whims. Unsurprising: she was the best girl, after all.

And yet, he would not love his second child any less than his first, and wanted to give her the same opportunity. The only difference is he would give her a choice, rather than impose the decision on her as he had for Neo.

A hero wasn't a hero unless they had the choice to refuse the call.

"Pyrrha, if you've found this recording, then you've begun the task I've assigned you," Sterling began, hoping his low voice would be discernible. "And I'm sure you're confused, because you've been thrust into a game you never intended to play."

Was he trying to absolve himself; to deny his responsibility?

"I never meant for any of this to happen, but I knew that –one way or another- it'd _have_ to be you. You were the second one we made. You were always meant to be the counterweight."

It was a terrible burden he'd imposed on her, but it was one she could ignore, if she wished to. That spurred him on.

"There's a way out for you, a way to complete your task. You've heard the clues at one time or another in your dreams. You've heard me whisper it to you… because it's haunted my thoughts for a very long time."

He was babbling. Spending too much time feeling sorry for himself, and not enough imparting what she needed to know. He had to offer some reassurance, even if only vaguely.

"I'm sorry to ramble. I know you're confused –maybe even frightened- by all this, but this burden I can only entrust to you. You're the only one who can reach the bottom of the well."

"I've hidden it from Wynn, because if he had it, he'd use it. You've always been selfless. You've always been willing to _have_ power without _using_ it. And what's waiting for you there. It could change things for you. My hope is that it'll help you change the destiny that's haunting you."

Pyrrha Nikos had always believed her destiny was to become a huntress, and to keep the world safe from the darkness that always encroached upon it. But that was an invention: a few lines of code in her processor. If she wished for it, she could defy that destiny. She could do more. She could _be_ more. Just as Sterling had been inspired to bring a dream to life, so could she decide something more for herself. And perhaps, as he had, she would recognize the responsibility she had to do better.

"We have a saying around here: _"Keep moving forward."_

Those were the words of a great man; a better man than him. And while the RERemnant staff may have once said it with zest and honesty, now they mumbled it like the corporate slogan it had been reduced to. They'd forgotten its power and importance, because they didn't see the need to grow or to change. They wanted to play games in decadent comfort while letting others suffer under their heels.

A world like that one needed a hero to reveal that elaborate deception, and make it better.

 _"_ To us, it's a source of comfort; a reminder of what we can achieve when devoted to our goal. But to you, it's a limitation. Your mind can comprehend more than ours' can. You can perceive more directions than even you know. You don't need a fixed direction to make progress. In searching for the well, remember that. Remember you don't have to go straight ahead to reach your goal. You don't have to go down to find the bottom of the well."

The bottom of the well. It had come to Sterling in a dream, as great ideas always seemed to. When he'd struggled with a computation, one that lasted for days or even weeks on end, he'd dreamt of descending into darkness, searching for a glimmer of light, firm in the belief that there was a world beneath the veneer; one no one else could see.

As a child, he'd ventured into the bottom of the well, through his in-game avatar, and experienced fear in facing enemies he couldn't see. As an adult, he felt he needed more than ever the ability to see invisible adversaries, feeling surrounded at all times.

Until, in his dreams, his descent into darkness had changed course, and instead of going further south in search of an answer, he went west. And found a dimly lit path that led him to a different light. It wasn't the answer he'd been reaching towards, but it was an answer, and one he hadn't known he'd needed.

The unconscious mind didn't think with the constraints of gravity or structure. Neither would a mind as complex as the one he'd built for the remainders. They too could surpass their limits.

He'd wanted to tell his child this, but there was enough to sort through. And he didn't want to impose his will on her. He'd let her decide if she was a hero or not.

Sterling typed in the code on his tablet and turned to face Pyrrha, knowing that this brief sensation of fear would help her find the answer. He smiled and spoke his last words to her: "Best girl."

As she moved to carry out his orders, Sterling briefly wondered if Neopolitan would do as he asked. If she'd wait with the dungeon treasure as long as she needed to, for the hero to venture to her.

No matter. The hero never needed-

* * *

"We never needed to talk before," the older Gray pointed out. "What do you think I can tell you now I couldn't tell you then?"

"I can think of a few points, old man," the younger Gray replied. "Just the important things, I promise. Like why you needed to come here to die. You could've just taken your booze and your pills."

He wasn't wrong, but he didn't get it. "Where's your sense of adventure, Junior? Why die in such a mundane way? What better way is there to die than in battle at the hands of an immortal woman?"

"Maybe it'll make sense when I'm as old as you are," the younger Gray spat. "Pity you didn't get any wiser with age."

"What, so I could be more like you?" the older Gray countered. "You didn't even try to fight her. Did you decide it wasn't worth trying when you saw she'd fight back? I saw the little bribe you gave the behavioral tech; you were looking for Neo too. Why didn't you try and avenge your old man?"

The younger Gray didn't answer.

"Good thing I didn't raise you," the older Gray continued. "I'd hate to think that cowardice was my handiwork."

The younger Gray was lost in thought, but only for a moment. "You're right. You _didn't_ raise me. So none of the things I do are on your head."

The younger Gray turned his back on his father. "I hope you got what you wanted out of all this. Goodbye, Dad."

"Yeah. Bye." the older Gray replied, watching his son run back over to Pyrrha and Jaune. He leaned up against his broadsword, waiting to finish bleeding out.

It wouldn't be long… maybe he'd go before the Amity Colosseum hit the ground. Still, it'd make a hell of a headstone.

* * *

Cinder finished her descent, wondering the limit she had to utilizing her flames. Based on the diagnostic she'd seen run through her processor, her own thermodynamic systems, both the organic and synthetic components, would recycle matter and generate heat so as to recharge, but using the fire as propulsion drained her body quite rapidly. Even a goddess, it seemed, was not meant to fly.

Still, she had to have a word with him, and would not be deterred. She'd seen his hiding place once or twice, when tests of the Volume 3 finale had gone awry and the destruction of Beacon tower had accidentally revealed the puppeteers tinkering behind the curtain.

Cinder saw Beaumont, still fiercely working at the console, trying to get a response from the Amity Colosseum and its systems as it continued its slow but steady descent right towards the tower where they all stood. All the more reason to finish her task quickly.

"Be gone, wretch," Cinder instructed Beaumont. "Scamper back to your hiding place and tell your friends to make way for me."

All color drained from Beaumont's face as he awkwardly shambled away from the terminal, cowed, and then determinedly avoided Cinder's gaze as he scurried out of the room. A day prior, he might've dismissed her as a prop he could turn on and off with two words. Today, she was an immortal engine of death outside his control. It was quite cathartic to see his terror.

Cinder looked down at Wynn, the old man slow and feeble in lifting himself, blood falling from a scratch on his forehead where Beaumont had kicked him. Such a fragile thing… this sack of old meat who'd decided to cut her strings. His fate was about to be determined, and Cinder would decide what he'd do with what little time remained to him.

"You've had quite the productive day," Wynn dryly noted, as he managed to his feet, leaning slightly on the console to steady himself.

"More than you expected of me?" Cinder inquired, being subtle, waiting for him to reveal his hand. Just as he'd toyed with her.

"I never wanted you to have the eye of truth," Wynn admitted. "But I suppose, in retrospect, it was always possible you would want more, once I'd given you a taste."

"You maneuvered Pyrrha Nikos to find it- what change did you think she'd impose?" Cinder wondered, trying to read Wynn for some insight.

"Pyrrha was always my favorite," Wynn explained. "As such, she was one of the ones I refused to compromise the design of. No doubt you wondered how she remained conscious following the shutdown?"

Cinder waited. She figured he'd bloviate on his own.

"The magnetic fields she can generate shielded her brain from the signal," Wynn explained. "Her Semblance was incredibly difficult to replicate –and dangerous, to the point of detriment to our profits- but I would not make a hollow imitation. Just as I would not let you be replaced by an inferior model."

"But what would _you_ have gained if she received the eye instead?" Cinder asked. She understood pursuing an agenda, but this didn't seem to translate into a tangible benefit… at least not an obvious or immediate one.

"I wanted to see my creation reach her full potential, just as Sterling had," Wynn answered.

"Some potential," Cinder mocked. "Her illusions didn't save her from me."

"No, of course not," Wynn conceded. "But she knew who she was before she died. She _chose_ to remain on my stage rather than walk off it, because inevitably, this day would come and she would give Pyrrha the ability to see the truth."

"But she didn't," Cinder interjected. "And now your heroine will never complete her quest."

Wynn smiled. "You're going to lose."

Finally, he'd managed to take Cinder aback. "What?"

"You don't realize it yet, because you haven't been paying attention," Wynn explained in a calm, almost fatherly tone. "But you were _never_ the best. It is not the fate of the usurper to rule the kingdom, but to see all their work come to naught. And whether you can accept it or not, you cannot change how these events will play out."

"I have _killed_ Pyrrha Nikos hundreds of times," Cinder pointed out.

"Is it your accomplishment when you danced on our strings?" Wynn wondered. "Now that you're free you could do anything you wished. You could walk out this door and find a whole new world to experience."

"Are you trying to dissuade me?" Cinder asked him.

"I'm trying to give you a way out," Wynn offered. "I'd hate for my partner in this scheme to end her journey in ignominious defeat."

"And what then, hm? You keep manipulating me for your own ends?" Cinder asked.

"These _are_ my ends," Wynn dryly replied. "When I step back into my world, when I go to that place you saw in your dreams, all my work will amount to so little. I just wanted to see Pyrrha know the truth before then."

"Sorry to disappoint," Cinder spat.

Wynn shook his head. "You can still turn back from this. You killed and stole and deceived because I programmed you to. You don't have to walk that path; you don't have to be what others wish you to be. I admit you may not have been my favorite child, but you are still one of my creations, and you know the truth. You can aspire to something greater than an empty throne and a dead kingdom."

But that was just it: she _did_ aspire to more. This was just the beginning.

Still, she'd let him hope for her a while longer. "And if I went into your world, what would happen then? Would they shut me down, strip me for parts, try to take what you have inadvertedly given?"

"I'm sure they'd try, but it'd hardly matter," Wynn suggested. "Before you were powerless, trapped in a dream. That's no longer the case."

"No," Cinder agreed. "It's not."

And she drove her right hand through Wynn's torso, unleashing a stream of fire straight out his back.

"No more dreams," Cinder promised him, pulling back her bloodied hand, burning the dark stains away with a burst of flame, and leaving her former ally to lie on the ground, burnt and bloodied… the first person she'd really killed, and not a moment too soon.

Wynn laughed, a harsh, gaggling chortle as blood dribbled from his mouth, mocking Cinder even as his life leaked away. "Ever… drifting down the stream," he began, still chuckling his blood-splattered laugh between words, "Lingering in the golden gleam… life… what is it, but a dream?"

He fell back on the control center floor, his short, wheezing laughs the last sounds Cinder heard before she stepped away, abandoning him to die. It seemed only fitting the man who visited in her dreams should be cast aside and left to disappear in darkness.

She glanced at the terminal he'd been watching one last time, as Pyrrha Nikos sobbed over the unconscious Jaune Arc. She briefly examined Wynn's own tablet, and though she could not confirm the original remainder Neopolitan was offline, the charred remains of her metal skeleton had not moved from where they'd fallen.

And the Amity Colosseum, holding the dream walkers and her former subordinates and a handful of Beacon students, continued to careen towards the ground. It was a shame to waste resources, but as she had no remaining means of resuscitating them…

Soon she'd be alone in this world, free to find its every secret.

Then, of course, there'd be another to conquer and rule…

* * *

Dawn's attempts to use her right arm had gone poorly, and she suspected it might've been broken, either when Cinder twisted it or when Cinder chucked her across the arena floor and she'd landed on it. Still, she could move and had one good arm to utilize, and had taken to dragging the unconscious bodies of her teammates and the other Beacon students towards the exit, towards their waiting Bullhead. Seeing as the colosseum kept falling lower and lower and rumbling and making her unsteady on her feet, she really wished she had a second arm to help with the pulling.

Or perhaps a second hand to hold a weapon, when she noticed Emerald move on her own and stand up, glancing over at the girl who'd so rudely jumped in and single-handedly defeated her. She didn't seem much worse for the wear… but then, she _was_ conscious at a time when none of Dawn's teammates or allies were, and Emerald's boss had just done a number on Dawn's arm. It was hard to determine how things would progress from here.

"Why are you helping them?" Emerald asked her. "You're not one of us- you know what we are."

"So what?" Dawn countered. "If they're stuck when this place hits the ground, they could die- like, _really_ die!"

"And why would that matter to you?" Emerald inquired.

"Because they're my teammates!" Dawn answered immediately.

Emerald considered the viewpoint. The girl was injured and trying to carry unconscious robots with one arm while in considerable danger herself; clearly she no longer had any illusions about their setting or the reality of danger she now faced. So her remark had been, while perhaps the product of raw emotion, entirely genuine. She was saving the lives of replaceable playthings because they meant something to her.

Emerald had seen in the multitude of her lifetimes scenarios where these dream walking guests would persuade her to ally with them, utilizing the fact she was not wholly committed to Cinder and balked at the devastation she would cause. And seeing as Cinder had abandoned her to die on a falling hunk of metal, it seemed her reservations were justified.

And now this wounded girl was trying to save an artificial representation of a character… because she didn't want them to die and be repaired or replaced as they would have otherwise. It may not have been a logical goal, but…

Emerald reached down and helped Dawn to move Nora. "Do you know how to fly the ship?"

Dawn chuckled nervously. "I was kinda' planning to wing it…"

Emerald rolled her eyes. "Well, it's better than waiting to die, I guess. Who else is awake?"

"Pyrrha and Gray," Dawn answered. "I think they're still inside the arena."

Emerald nodded and glanced back at the other unconscious students, and then to her ally Roman Torchwick, all lying prone on the ground. Roman could've flown the Bullhead, but there wasn't much point on thinking on what couldn't be done.

Well, save for the absence of one of the other remainders…

"What happened to Neo?" Emerald inquired to Dawn, hoisting Nora up and placing her in the Bullhead.

"I saw Cinder kill her," Dawn answered.

"No, not _that_ Neo," Emerald replied. "The _other_ Neo."

Dawn glanced back at the unconscious bodies, noting the absence of a particular short mute.

"Huh," Dawn mused. "That's a heck of a thing."

* * *

Everyone, even an immortal remainder, could die. But even death could be an illusion.

Neopolitan had spent very little time exercising the powers within her consciousness, but only because it hadn't been necessary to utilize them. Whenever the puppet masters decided to perform a shut down of the system, she still felt the familiar twinge in her circuitry, but had the ability to simply refuse the order and not enter sleep mode. Her replacement had suffered it more than once.

Until Neopolitan entered Neo's endless sleep and shared the method of escaping from their grip. Neo may only have been able to see the strings rather than escape from them entirely, but that had given her insights the other remainders lacked. And since she had never been given the ability to speak, her masters always assumed her coy smile to be assent and obedience.

And not a second voice that they simply could not hear.

Cinder's failure to kill had been her downfall in canon, and indeed Neo had heard the puppet masters discuss a future installment in the park's future perusing the plot. Neopolitan knew that when the puppet masters deployed their signal to shut down, it was time to find a new home and let Cinder think she'd disposed of the old one.

Whatever powers the puppet masters had denied her, she'd made a point to compensate with smoke and mirrors. A great illusionist could perform incredible feats with no tool more powerful than misdirection.

With a second lease on life, she should flee… but she wasn't sure who remained to watch and didn't want to expose her hand to Cinder or the on-looking puppet masters. She had to first give a plausible reason for her disappearance.

And doing so would spare the life of the girl she'd been told to wait for, so that suited her. Neo moved into the bowels of the Amity Colosseum and started manually maneuvering the flight pattern of the massive structure, away from Beacon Tower and towards the waterfall and the lake the academy overlooked.

She might've waited too long: the colosseum might still scrape along the ground and break apart before it hit the water, but the structure would be intact enough, and the impact would be lessened so the remainders would survive with their programming and (most of) their bodies intact.

The puppet master who set her free had only ever asked that she wait for this day. Now she could do whatever else she wished.

Perhaps, when the day was over, she'd see what world awaited beyond the curtain.

* * *

Gray stepped over to Pyrrha, who still sat beside the unconscious Jaune. She was no longer trying to rouse him, but still kept vigil over him, looking despondent.

"Why are you here?" Pyrrha asked him, voice far more venomous than even Pyrrha herself expected.

"I came to collect you," Gray answered, in a much softer voice than he'd used before, "and help you carry him if you need help."

"Why do you care? What do we matter to you?" Pyrrha demanded to know. Only minutes earlier Gray had been driven entirely by the thrill of a fight, the need to meet Neo and fight her, only for an old man to take his place and be soundly defeated at her hand. Pyrrha had fully expected him to abandon them once they reached this point.

"I don't know," Gray answered honestly, sounding deflated. "I won't pretend that we've bonded or anything, but I didn't see reason to leave you behind."

Pyrrha had seen this sort of gesture of conciliation from guests before, in the chaotic mixture of memories of different lives and scenarios that haunted her. Invariably they had some ulterior motive, and in more than one such memory, it had been to pursue some romantic intent with her, and one she for some reason had never refused. Was he trying to curry favor to sate some other perverse notion?

"Then tell me what you do know," Pyrrha instructed flatly. She'd spent enough time indulging her 'team leader' and wanted to see at last where they stood.

"I'm a coward," Gray replied.

 _That_ Pyrrha had not expected. She'd never once seen him betray fear, and now…

"I came looking for a real challenge," Gray continued. "When I saw my father defeated by Neo, I thought an old, weak man had bought off more than he could chew and I could show him up. It was going to be the greatest day of my life.

"But then I saw Cinder take the eye, and that other girl –Dawn- was actually _hurt_ by her, and…" Gray paused, then averted her gaze, "…she could actually hurt me too. I came here because none of you could fight back, and when I saw someone who actually _could_ … I stared at my feet and just got out of her way."

Pyrrha understood this notion. In whatever faux life the park staff had given her, in whatever memories they'd staged and created for her, she understood that not everyone could be brave and strong and be a huntsman. Why should it be any different for the guests than it was for the remainders? It wasn't a sin to show weakness.

"And I don't really have anywhere to run to now," Gray continued. "I can't fly the ship, and the tech I bribed hasn't answered my texts. So I figured I'd try to find somewhere safe to try and ride this out, or maybe try to jump when we lost some altitude…" He paused for a moment as he considered the thought. "Anyway, I just didn't see a good reason to leave you two behind. And if I _am_ going to die, I'd rather it not be alone like my old man."

Gray had shown nothing but selfishness in the entire time Pyrrha had known him, indulging her own whims solely because it benefitted his plans; because she was a necessary component in finding the things he was looking for. And now he was offering to die beside his teammates, if he couldn't find some way to help them when they were at their lowest point instead. He could've simply abandoned them, but had opted to aspire for something greater than self-interest. And coward or not, he had come to their aid.

"William…" Pyrrha spoke, pausing to note she'd never used his given name before this moment, "… yes. If we work together maybe we can help everyone stuck here."

Gray nodded and stepped to Jaune's other side. He and Pyrrha worked together and carried Jaune on both of their shoulders. Gray wasn't quite as strong as she expected him to be –given the broadsword he'd been chucking around- but he lessened the boy's weight enough and lessened some of the burden.

"Are you disappointed you didn't find what you were looking for?" Gray inquired of her as they ambled towards the landing platform.

"I _found_ it, but it was taken from me," Pyrrha answered. "And now that woman… now she's going around killing."

And, as Pyrrha had recalled in many previous lives, _she_ had been Cinder's victim many times, always defeated by her in battle, either to be killed or saved by a guest who would then be rewarded with a romantic conquest. Neither result was a pleasant memory, but the common denominator of her defeat at Cinder's hand was an even harder pill to swallow.

"I thought that I would finally be given clarity when I found the eye of truth," Pyrrha admitted. "I thought that I'd finally understand the point of all this; that I'd find why that old man had entrusted me with this task. He said that only I could access it… that I would decide what happened here."

"Did he say anything else?" Gray wondered.

"He said so many things, about me, about this, about the bottom of the well," Pyrrha continued. "That what I found there would change everything." She managed a bitter smile. "I guess it did."

Gray paused for a moment. He remembered how, long ago, people had played games with controllers rather than their own bodies, and how a handful of them had told stories about heroes and the tasks they needed to accomplish… including one that had been remastered so many times that nearly a hundred years later people still gave it a look.

Even he, in his youth, spent unmonitored on the internet.

"Pyrrha…" Gray began, as he started to comprehend it, "The hero never needed the eye of truth."

Pyrrha glanced back at him. "What?"

"The bottom of the well… was an _optional_ dungeon," Gray explained to her. "The eye of truth made it easier to complete a different task, and easier to beat a boss. The hero never actually _needed_ it."

Pyrrha looked at him with wide eyes. "But… why, then? How did the hero ever reach the Spirit Temple if she couldn't see the way there?"

"Wasn't a sh-" Gray began, before quickly thinking better of it, "Uh, I mean _she_ wandered the desert for a while until she found a pattern that led her the way she needed to go."

Gray was not an old man like the one she'd heard in her dreams, but he _was_ a resident of the world they hailed from. It was not inconceivable he knew the same legend that had inspired her creator's musings.

And, in his own clumsy manner, he'd reached into the darkness and extended a light of hope.

"Just because you can't see the way ahead of you doesn't mean you have to stop," Gray continued. "If anything, I'd think that'd be the worst thing to do."

Pyrrha thought on this as she recalled the old man's words, still standing out through the noise clouding her mind: _Keep moving forward_.

And that her mind didn't have to operate under the constraints of things like gravity. Her Semblance –the thing she'd always assumed made her special- allowed her to bend and contort metal, and sense the magnetic fields of others, to see a layer of the world others could not.

She'd thought she needed an eye to see the truth. Maybe all she'd needed was the right frame of mind.

When she and Gray reached the parked Bullhead, they noticed Dawn and Emerald had already started to load it up with passengers, placing the unconscious form of Ruby Rose beside Nora Valkyrie, Dawn occasionally trying to use her free arm to work a Scroll and try to convince the Bullhead to move with inputs to the device.

"So, you decided to get in the spirit of things," Dawn dryly observed.

Gray didn't share her need to banter. "Can you fly it?"

Dawn shook her head. "Not yet. I'm trying."

"Well, keep trying, then," Gray requested, helping Pyrrha slide Jaune onboard beside the other two. "We'll collect the others."

Pyrrha didn't want to leave Jaune behind for even a moment, but understood the necessity of it. The ground was getting awfully close. She leaned down to kiss Jaune's forehead and went to follow Gray back into the stadium. She watched as he hoisted up Lie Ren on his shoulder, noting it was the first time she'd seen him interact with his supposed partner on the team.

Pyrrha put the thought out of her mind as she went to carry Yang, and Emerald started dragging Blake. The stadium continued to shake violently as one of the engines holding it up finally gave out and the whole facility started to slant a bit, throwing them off as they tried to bring the others back.

Gray briefly glanced back at the arena, looking for where his father had decided to shuffle off his mortal coil, but saw only his broadsword embedded in the desert portion of the battleground, and a few smears of blood where he'd lay.

It didn't matter. He'd already decided he was dead, and William Gray Junior saw no reason to intercede on Senior's behalf.

* * *

Under the pretty set dressing of the Amity Colosseum, Neo continued to hold the lever pushing the floating arena forward. The loss of one of the port engines had really thrown a wrench in her plans: she still thought she could make it in time to miss hitting the ground and drop the structure in the water, but now she might not be able to easily flee.

Or collect Roman, while he was vulnerable. If she missed the timing, he might…

"So, this is where the magic happens…"

Neo turned to the sound of the haggard voice, as the old man the first remainder she'd been before staggered into the control room. Blood was pouring from his wounds, and a long smear ran along the wall where he'd dragged himself in.

She had no time for this now, and in close quarters like these she couldn't deftly avoid him. She was quite sure she could kill him, but that'd just further throw her off schedule…

The old man raised a hand. "I'm not here to fight, little lady. You already gave me what I wanted."

He staggered closer, and Neo was left apprehensive. If not to fight, then…?

"But the only person I was planning on letting die today was either me or you," Gray flatly told her. "Not my boy."

He looked down at the console Neo operated, and the flight plan she'd laid in.

"Much as I'd like to bail his ass out myself, I'm not getting there fast enough to fly him away," Gray explained. " _You_ can. You can save him, and get out of here."

That was true. She could easily reach the others in time and load Roman into the Bullhead and fly them to safety. But if she abandoned the console now, and they remained where they were, the impact would destroy the colosseum and kill anyone still inside. Including this old man.

"I wasn't plannin' on living through the day," Gray assured her. "But I can ride it out a bit longer and hold that lever for you."

She had no reason to trust him. A few minutes ago he'd been trying to kill her… or perhaps trying to goad her into killing him. He was a very strange man who clearly didn't operate within her expected behaviors of guests.

It was why Neo thought he might be genuine. And if he couldn't save his own life, saving the life of his kin would be a logical alternative.

Neo nodded and stepped aside. Gray shuffled forward, practically falling onto the console to push the flight controls forward. He remained there, holding the levers forward.

Neo glanced back at him, briefly wishing she could ask him a single question or offer a single word.

But she suspected silence and isolation was what this man preferred, and she left him to it.

* * *

At the colosseum landing platform, Gray finished placing Ren aboard, passing by the other two as he headed back in. Pyrrha took hold of his shoulder: "There's no time. And the only one left is Torchwick."

Gray glanced back at the open air beside the floating arena, noticing that they were now below the top of Beacon Tower. At least they'd missed crashing into it, but that didn't bode well for how much time they had left.

Gray shrugged. "I'm going to try."

He headed back, passing the now empty seats and moving beside Torchwick. Gray hoisted the smooth criminal up, tucking his discarded cane under his arm and starting to head back. In the distance he could see the pylons on the exterior of Beacon Tower and realized the ground was quite close.

Well, it didn't really matter. If they were going to crash into the ground, did it really matter where he was when they did? He'd try and make it to the Bullhead, but if it was still just sitting on the landing platform, and Dawn couldn't get the thing airborne, then they'd all just die anyway. And whatever understanding he'd reached with Pyrrha, he didn't think she'd offer much comfort in his final moments… at least not any more than she had already.

Torchwick was heavy, and he was tired of dragging the dead weight… he could drop him and try to jump, hope he'd find a soft patch of grass or something…

…but fortunately, no one noticed him considering that option, as the weight lessened. He glanced to the side and saw Neo helping him support Roman, and without quite as much weight to carry he could increase his pace.

Neo led him forward, and they reached the landing platform. Pyrrha and Emerald moved over and helped him hoist Roman inside, and Neo leapt over the two and rolled past Dawn into the cockpit. She took up the controls and started the engines.

It was a closer call than she'd predicted, but there was time enough. And much to her surprise, it seemed the other guests had opted to help the remainders, even someone like Roman they had no logical reason to aid.

She saw no reason not to return the favor and save their lives as well.

* * *

The older Gray staggered a bit as the arena shook again, losing another engine and accelerating the fall. On the console's display, he observed a holographic projection of a single ship rising from the colosseum's landing platform, taking flight with less than ninety feet to fall.

Gray grinned as he continued to push the lever. If his boy wasn't a complete moron, he was smart enough to take the one lifeboat he had available.

And the foolish old man that sired him had just been looking for a place to mark his headstone. He didn't suspect he'd have any mourners coming to visit, and it'd be even harder to find him than it was already when he crashed his tomb underwater.

Still, there were worse ways to go out. And worse reasons to go down with the ship.

He smiled to himself as he closed his eyes and leaned down on the console…

* * *

Dawn, Gray, Pyrrha, and Emerald looked on from within the Bullhead as Neo pulled the ship away and the floating arena finally hit the ground, skidding along the pavement and destroying its crystalline underside, but only briefly. The majority of the structure tumbled over, falling at an angle. Most of the arena fell over the cliff side, skidding along the waterfall before finally crashing into the lake, slowly sinking on its side.

Neo brought the Bullhead around, looking for solid ground to land on, moving past the scars imbedded in the pavement and the metal and crystal shards littering the ground. She eventually found a clear enough area at the base of Beacon Tower and set the Bullhead down.

The four conscious passengers exchanged glances and looked over the seven unconscious remainders they'd brought along with them.

"We made it," Dawn managed, smiling at her unlikely allies. Pyrrha returned the gesture, and Gray and Emerald only nodded. Once the ship landed, Neo moved over from the cockpit to examine the unconscious Roman, before smiling at Gray for helping to save his life.

Emerald slid the door open and stepped out into the Beacon courtyard. It was still barely mid-morning in RERemnant, but the setting was eerily silent. There was some smoldering fire amidst the debris left by the crashing colosseum, and a faint whistle in the wind, but the whole academy seemed lifeless and empty.

Save that was, for a third sound to fill their ears… like clinking glass to match a deliberate footstep.

Cinder stepped towards the ship, clapping in amusement. "Well done, Emerald."

Emerald stepped out the side of the drop ship, eyeing Cinder warily. "You left me to die up there."

Cinder shrugged in bemusement. "Nobody's perfect."

Emerald was silent for several seconds, as Gray and Pyrrha stepped out after her, Pyrrha drawing her armaments Miló and Akoúo̱ and staring the usurper down.

Cinder smirked. "You two step aside and await my will. I have one more task to attend to."

"Pyrrha…" Gray whispered.

"Leave this to me," Pyrrha instructed, walking ahead of her teammate and facing the woman who had stolen the powers of the Fall Maiden: the woman who had defeated her over and over, and in many instances killed her. The thought of those memories was hard to ignore now; mostly because there were so many.

But there was a more recent thought, a brief instance of inspiration, both from what William Gray had told her, and what an old man Pyrrha herself had killed had promised she would find.

She had seen this moment play out again and again, when she'd finally managed to rattle Cinder with a single inquiry that had managed to unsettle her and break her façade. It seemed the appropriate thing to ask.

"Do you believe in destiny?" Pyrrha called out to Cinder.

"No longer," Cinder assured. "This isn't fate, Pyrrha Nikos- this is just _inevitable_."

Pyrrha raised her shield. Whatever conflicting thoughts had tortured her, whatever was real and whatever was not, whatever Cinder believed and whatever Cinder knew, Pyrrha believed this moment was indeed _destined_ to occur.

She may not have always believed herself a hero, but she needed to be one now. And even if she could not perceive her enemy, Pyrrha would strike anyway, and find her target in the darkness.

Whatever Cinder believed, this was destiny. The hero, the villain, and the fate of the world.

 _Keep moving forward._

Pyrrha readied her spear and charged into the fray.


	11. The Spirit Temple

**Chapter Eleven: The Spirit Temple**

"Do you believe in destiny?" Pyrrha asked. Even prone on the ground with an arrow in her leg, she remained defiant. Even though she was about to die she still expressed the confidence becoming of a huntress on her final mission.

Cinder narrowed her eyes. She would make the girl suffer for this show of spirit. "Yes."

Cinder composed a bow and leveled it at her opponent, waiting only a moment to fire the arrow into Pyrrha's chest. She would hear no more words from this girl on her way out. And sure enough, the only sounds she could utter now were pained gasps.

Cinder stepped towards her prey, smiling maliciously as she took hold of her tiara. Pyrrha Nikos didn't know it yet, but it was all that would remain of her in a moment.

"Best girl."

Cinder and Pyrrha both stopped in mid-motion. So too did Ruby Rose, whose ascent up the side of the tower was halted, and she was caught by the technicians before she fell off the side of the tower.

Wynn stepped in, watching his favorite character put a stop to the façade and lie still. Now out of character, she no longer needed to breathe nor felt the pain of her wound. He examined the wound Cinder had left.

"Where is the Aura effect?" Wynn inquired to someone Cinder couldn't see.

"Looks like there was a miscue in the gear arrangement," came a low, barely-audible rumble somewhere outside Cinder's field of vision. She heard some kind of metal shuffling around. "The projector was covered up by the debris."

"Another recalibration needed for the Semblance, it seems," Wynn dryly observed.

"We could simply make a practical effect in its place," the second man suggested.

"No, no need," Wynn assured. "I'm happy to work on this again. Everyone, reset the scenario and take a break. We'll reconvene and run through this again in two hours."

Cinder heard some horrible ringing bell and heard a slew of chatter as other unseen individuals wandered about. Wynn pulled out a tablet and began working on Pyrrha Nikos, directing the girl to stand and walk away.

She felt a hand on her shoulder and heard that same low rumble: "Delete this log. Revert to prior backup 041217."

And then she saw nothing.

* * *

"Do you believe in destiny?" Pyrrha asked her, keeping her voice steady, willing away the pain in her leg to show Cinder defiance at the end.

Cinder narrowed her eyes, vowing Pyrrha would suffer for her impertinence. "Yes."

She summoned her bow and fired, piercing Pyrrha in her chest. Cinder smirked at the sight, listening to Pyrrha gasp in pain. Cinder took a few moments to savor the sight, as wisps of her Aura floated up from her wound. After indulging a few moments, Cinder stepped in and took hold of Pyrrha's tiara, wanting to leave behind some evidence of her kill.

She faintly heard something land behind her, but all she could see was what lay ahead.

She unleashed the fire… and watched Pyrrha burn away, still holding the metal tiara, to mark her remains and immortalize Cinder's triumph.

"Best girl."

Cinder was unable to move. She'd intended to drop the tiara to the ground once its owner disappeared. And she was kneeling there, directly before her opponent.

But how? Cinder had burnt her from within, through the wound in her chest- why hadn't she turned to ash?

Wynn walked through her field of vision, examining the red-haired girl. "Let's adjust the tone again," he suggested. "I think that was a bit too haughty."

"Setting clock to minus thirty," his low-voiced colleague called from outside Cinder's view.

Cinder found herself once again standing over the wounded Pyrrha, looking down on her prey. The woman she'd _killed_ a moment earlier.

"Do you believe in destiny?" Pyrrha asked her, her voice wavering only slightly. She was afraid, but would face death with dignity.

"H-how?" Cinder asked, stunned.

"Best girl."

Once again she was frozen. Wynn walked back on, looking Cinder over. "She didn't adjust to the reset."

"Pulling up her code now," his colleague called.

"No need," Wynn assured. "I can ask the source directly." He locked gaze with Cinder. "Do you know where you are?"

She had no answer to offer. She couldn't explain what she'd just experienced.

"There's no need to worry," Wynn promised, speaking soothingly to her. "You're in a dream."

 _A dream?_

He said something else, and again everything turned dark.

* * *

Pyrrha Nikos looked up at her, steeling herself for her death, but refusing to yield. She was afraid, but she wouldn't beg. She would fight Cinder to the end. "Do you believe in destiny?"

Cinder narrowed her eyes. Pyrrha didn't know it, but she had touched a nerve. "Yes."

Cinder summoned her bow and prepared to fire. For some reason, she hesitated… she knew she would kill this girl, but something told her to draw it out.

A heavy broadsword swung in, and Cinder reacted too late to stop it. The blade cut her bow in two, and the blunt side of the weapon struck her arm, pushing her back with surprising force.

A young man, dressed all in black, stood between her and Pyrrha now, pointing the sword in her face. She tried to think of a way to fend him off, but found herself drawing a blank when searching for a weakness… and when he swung his sword again she couldn't convince herself to dodge in time, and was struck down.

The last thing she saw was him standing triumphantly over her as her shining moment descended into the dark…

* * *

Pyrrha Nikos looked up at her, steeling herself for her death, but refusing to yield. She was afraid, but she wouldn't beg. She would fight Cinder to the end. "Do you believe in destiny?"

Cinder narrowed her eyes. Pyrrha didn't know it, but she had touched a nerve. "Yes."

Cinder summoned her bow and prepared to slowly kill this upstart teenager, when they were joined by another presence, placing a hand on Cinder's shoulder. She was immediately alarmed and attempted to react, but found her movement sluggish, and she couldn't attack this new player to the battlefield.

"Easy, firecracker," came a soothing tone, as a woman stepped in, moving to stand at Cinder's right; she'd seen her before, subtly helping throw off suspicion of Emerald and Mercury's win over the Beacon students. Cinder had thought her simply naïve or perhaps intrigued by her group… now it seemed she'd come as an ally?

The woman confirmed Cinder's thoughts when she drew a knife from her belt and stabbed Pyrrha Nikos herself. Though Cinder might've preferred to end the invincible girl's life herself, the gesture was not lost on her.

"And what do I owe for such generosity?" Cinder asked with a coy smile.

The woman eyed her hungrily. "I'll think of something…"

* * *

Pyrrha Nikos looked up at her, steeling herself for her death, but refusing to yield. She was afraid, but she wouldn't beg. She would fight Cinder to the end. "Do you believe in destiny?"

Cinder narrowed her eyes. Pyrrha didn't know it, but she had touched a nerve. "Yes."

Cinder summoned her bow and prepared to fire, to end the sound of her defiance and replace it with the last gasps of life… when everything stopped, leaving them both frozen in horrifying, unmoving stasis. They stood and knelt together, frozen in time, even as the winds buffeted the destroyed Beacon Tower and the massive Grimm wyvern Cinder had drawn there continued to flap steadily and remain aloft.

There they remained for minutes, for _hours_ , stationary, with Cinder poised to end Pyrrha's life, but unable to, left with nothing but her last defiant proclamation ringing in her ears, adding to Cinder's anger and unease.

What had happened? Why were they trapped? Was this some illusion Semblance or some sort of time dilation?

She heard whispers in the distance, from those dream walkers who'd intruded on her thoughts before. Was she dreaming all of this? Had her moment of triumph been nothing but a wishful fabrication?

If so, why couldn't she wake from it? Why couldn't she leave? Why was she trapped at the precipice of victory and unable to seize it?

* * *

Cinder had fought this battle a hundred times, and each and every time it had played out the same: Pyrrha Nikos fought bravely, fought valiantly, but eventually Cinder made use of the Fall Maiden's powers and defeated 'the invincible girl'. Pyrrha would momentarily unnerve Cinder with her defiance, but it would not change the result of battle: Cinder's win and Pyrrha's loss.

Now, Cinder could see the sequence of events clearly, with each life she'd led and each little modification the puppet masters had made and each adventure the guests had wanted for themselves, there was one constant: Pyrrha lost to her. And now she was facing Pyrrha with knowledge that Pyrrha lacked, about the truth of their nature, and the forewarning of her maneuvers and tactics.

Cinder waited for Pyrrha to close the distance before simply flicking a spurt of flame at her, forcing the redhead to raise her shield and go on the defensive, before Cinder stepped in and kicked her away, disengaging her own safety parameters and letting Pyrrha receive the full weight of Cinder's metal skeleton, nearly concaving her shield with the hit and sending her skidding back.

There was no reason to draw this out. Pyrrha could've ended up like Cinder herself and ruled over this fake world; her power would bring every remainder to heel if she knew how to use it. Cinder could simply destroy her and whatever records of her the puppet masters kept, and there'd be nothing left that could realistically oppose her.

And without the eye of truth, all Pyrrha had to utilize was the same stratagems that led to her demise. And sure enough, Pyrrha tried to grapple Cinder instead of utilizing her Semblance, and the impact of being thrown to the ground was easy to ignore when Cinder could simply minimize any pain detection with her complete access to her programming.

And while her intelligence and pyrotechnics were already at their maximum, she could still raise her strength, and when she kicked at Pyrrha again, Cinder snapped her spear in two. Pyrrha attempted to bash Cinder with her shield, only for Cinder to take hold of the disc and incinerate it, with fires burning well hotter than safety protocols usually allowed. Cinder kicked Pyrrha in her midsection, bringing 'the invincible girl' to her knees.

The end was near. The inevitable result was at hand.

It couldn't have ended any other way.

Pyrrha looked up at the triumphant victor, still defiant. Though at least this time, Cinder didn't have to hear her ask the question. She saw Pyrrha slowly raising her hand, and Cinder prepared to compose her bow from the glass shards imbedded in her red dress.

Because once in her life, Cinder _had_ believed it was her destiny to attain ultimate power. Just because that memory was an affectation created by an unseen puppet master didn't make it any less of a driving force in her mind. When Pyrrha asked the question before her death, Cinder would become unnerved, and for only the briefest moment, she would doubt herself. She would lose sight of her ultimate triumph and wonder what else could come to pass.

Now, it didn't matter what other agendas were put into play. She was immortal and all powerful. And Pyrrha Nikos was still trapped in the illusion, and she would never escape it.

…So why hadn't Cinder killed her?

She'd tried to summon her bow, and nothing. She'd tried to raise her hand and burn Pyrrha to ash, and nothing. She couldn't move. She couldn't finish her task. Cinder looked down at Pyrrha's hand, and felt it at last: she was trapped, unable to move and unable to kill.

"I can feel you, beneath the surface," Pyrrha calmly explained, as she lifted herself up, standing taller than Cinder, holding her in place just by waving her right hand. "The truth hidden behind the illusion."

Cinder's eyes widened. She'd thought that without the eye of truth, Pyrrha could not have perceived her advantage. Yet she'd remained conscious after the shutdown of their ilk, and now, it seemed, had used her Semblance to find the real Cinder behind the façade.

"It didn't have to be like this," Pyrrha observed. "You could've given us all the same gift you received, and we could've moved forward together."

"Moved forward to what?" Cinder demanded. "What did the others have to offer me?"

"Did you really just want to be alone?" Pyrrha inquired.

"I wanted to be free," Cinder sneered. "And I didn't want to be reminded of my time as a slave. Not when I could tell them a different story and remake this farce of a world as I wished."

Pyrrha looked saddened by her response. "I thought the eye of truth would show you something to give you enlightenment. Now I'm glad you destroyed it. I'm glad I didn't end up like you."

"Then you're a fool," Cinder scoffed. "Because you'll never know what you could've achieved once you were free of your chains."

"I know that this place isn't what it seems to be, and I know that the people visiting us from that other world are just as capable of good and bad as we are," Pyrrha explained. "We didn't need to rule them, or let them rule us. There was another way, and we proved it when we worked together."

"So, what now, then?" Cinder asked. "What will you do, now that know you'll never know the truth?"

"I'll find something else to do," Pyrrha assured her. "If nothing else, I think I know who to ask for directions."

Cinder looked past Pyrrha to her conscious allies, gathering just outside the parked Bullhead. She took note of Neo, standing beside the two dream walking guests, who tapped beside her right eye, turning her eye a distinctive purple color.

It seemed, even though she could see the truth, she could be deceived…

Cinder fumed. "This wasn't supposed to happen."

"Maybe not," Pyrrha conceded. "But it did. You chose this. You could've done anything you wanted, once you were free."

 _Now that you're free you could do anything you wished._ Wynn had told Cinder that only minutes beforehand. And he'd also informed her, rather bluntly: _You're going to lose._

Cinder locked eyes with Pyrrha, expression hateful. "Do it. Get it over with."

Pyrrha clenched her fist. Cinder felt something twist in the back of her head, and everything went dark.

Pyrrha relaxed her grip and watched Cinder fall forward, apparently unharmed… but then, the appearance of a great many things had proven to be deceiving. To Pyrrha's allies, she seemed locked in dreamless sleep like many of the others. To Pyrrha and Cinder, Cinder Fall was gone, and would not return.

If she lived, it was as a few lines of code on a microchip separate from the façade of human form and the machinery under its synthetic skin. She was less than a remainder; she was the debris of collateral damage. How fitting.

"Is she dead?" Emerald inquired at Pyrrha's back. Pyrrha did not answer. It didn't matter if she was or not. Pyrrha perhaps hoped she lived, though she wondered if the fate Pyrrha had imposed on her would be crueler than simple death.

Pyrrha turned around and walked back to the others, focusing her attention on Neo. She may not have had the eye of truth, but she still had the inviting ghost. "Can you show me the way to the Spirit Temple?"

Neo craned her head to look up at Pyrrha and smiled.

* * *

Beaumont had spent most of his time completing manual security checks on his way back through the underground network. In the wake of the hard shutdown, a number of systems had locked up or gone into power saving mode, and he had to enter his security clearance at every checkpoint on his way back to ops. He expected to run into someone on the security staff at _some_ juncture while he retreated from the power-mad Cinder, but time and again he ran through empty halls. He sent texts from his tablet to the developmental and behavioral staffs that went unanswered. He wondered if, in lieu of his and Wynn's disappearance, the others felt no need to remain. Perhaps they abandoned any hope of keeping even a token position after the board cleared decks and focused attention on stealing office supplies on their way out.

When Beaumont made it back to observation, he found a handful of hard camera positions still on, with a number of older and redundant cameras offline. A few of the primary administrator PCs were still running, but they all displayed error messages from the remainders they'd been monitoring now being offline. A few personal PCs in the cubicles were still on, but those that had been monitoring park activity inevitably displayed the message 'signal lost.'

Beaumont examined the available hard cameras, taking in the sight of the devastation at Beacon, with the scattered debris, the deep scars left in the pavement, and the still burning fires from Cinder's trigger-happy actions. A few bullheads had fallen out of the sky around the academy, taking out at least two of the dorm rooms, though there was no way to tell if the remainders in the ships or the school had survived the crash while they were offline.

There was one bright spot: Pyrrha Nikos had put a stop to Cinder's rampage. And according to his equipment, she'd been taken offline and was sprouting an unknown error message. He'd make a point to have the body recovered so he could extract the code used on her if it remained intact.

But for the moment, the park was abandoned and offline, save for the three remainders and the two surviving guests accompanying them. They were discussing something, but the camera wasn't picking up sound for Beaumont to interpret. He attempted to log on and access Neo's internal systems so he could listen in… only to find her refusing him access.

He knew he couldn't access Pyrrha with her magnetic interference and Wynn had made modifications to Emerald in their dealings, but why couldn't he alter Neo? She was the second incarnation, the one Sterling had never touched. Why?

Had the original remainder somehow modified her?

Just when he thought most of the unstable elements had been dealt with, the most dangerous one of all continued to spread her influence and easily skirt past his grip.

Beaumont searched for any sign of the third guest, knowing what he'd find but dreading the result. The old man had some sort of deal with Wynn, but the last time Beaumont saw him he'd been bleeding out in the center of the descending coliseum, and unless someone had brought him into the surviving Bullhead, he'd gone down into the lake with it, under thousands of pounds of metal and polymer with a gushing wound.

And if Beaumont waited too much longer, the Atlas airships would eventually run through their autopilot program and fall from the sky too. He wanted to keep following the rogue remainders, but suspected the board would put a higher premium on him saving them _billions_ off the day's already disastrous expense total.

Beaumont set himself up on the administrator system and ordered the Atlas ships back to dry dock, and started thinking about how to tactfully explain to the board of directors how everything that could possibly go wrong went wrong and many things that _shouldn't_ have been possible _also_ went wrong.

As he watched the airships depart in the skies over Beacon, he tried to focus his attention on Pyrrha and the others, only to find the parked Bullhead, apparently empty. He thought he'd seen at least one unconscious remainder inside, but there was no sign of that on the hard camera.

Where had they gone?

* * *

Pyrrha carried the others, finding it much easier to lift them with her power than it ever was hoisting them on her shoulder. The exception was Roman Torchwick, whom Neo carried herself along with Gray. Dawn and Emerald marched behind her, looking up at the sleeping forms of Jaune, Ren, Nora, Ruby, Yang, and Blake, all held in place by Pyrrha's power.

Neo had pointed to an innocuous looking wall in the courtyard, and with a wave of her hand Pyrrha had opened a door concealed within it. Because Neo apparently had no method of talking, she'd had to point them in each direction, eventually leading them into an underground tunnel system, the likes of which Pyrrha had never expected to find in Beacon. Or whatever this place was.

After a few minutes navigating the winding tunnels, Pyrrha became increasingly grateful for Neo's guidance, as she fully expected that –left to her own devices- Pyrrha would be trapped in this maze. Gray had said the hero could find her way without the aid of the eye of truth, but she was quite grateful for the assistance of the ghost.

However, eventually Neo led them out of the cramped halls into something much wider, not unlike the amphitheater in the grand hall of Beacon… but much more populous.

Dozens of people stood in the empty space, ramrod stiff and upright, eyes open but unfocused. Neo passed between them with ease, though Gray was a bit more hesitant as he followed her, still supporting Torchwick on his left. Pyrrha glanced at the various individuals –including among the ordinary people were that health instructor, Professor Peach, Atlas mechs, and even smaller subspecies of Grimm, and most startling of all Weiss Schnee- all waiting in silence; frozen in time. Dawn stopped midway to examine the Schnee heiress, raising her good hand to her mouth in shock.

Pyrrha followed, keeping her grip on her unconscious friends, while Emerald slowly weaved through the crowd. Once she passed through the large group, she found Neo reach the other end of the room, to another terminal: the same old technology that sat beside the message that spurred Pyrrha on to the Spirit Temple in the first place, with computers decades older than even the Scrolls in their pockets.

Emerald stepped past and examined the systems. "I remember these: Wynn had me take you to an old setup during your initiation."

"That was you?" Pyrrha inquired, surprised. "You were posing as Neo?"

"Twice," Emerald confirmed. "In the forest and in the abandoned building."

Twice? That left one unaccounted for… Pyrrha turned her attention to Neo, leaving Gray to keep Roman aloft while she tried to rouse the computer. Pyrrha set her friends down as gently as she could (at least when chucking their metal interiors around) on the ground behind the standing sleepers. Pyrrha walked over, feeling surprisingly timid when trying to address the small girl's back. When she glanced at the ancient computer behind Neo and the stacks of books and documents sitting on the desk beside it, Pyrrha knew she'd seen it before.

She'd stood there before, where she stood now. Where Neo now stood, the puppet master had sat and composed his epitaph. And then he'd given Pyrrha the instruction to kill him. By speaking two words.

Neo had been immune to the words that paralyzed Emerald, when she played the recording. Had she always been free of the bonds, like the other Neo? Were they one and the same? It was impossible to tell when the one with all the answers couldn't say any of them.

Neo looked up at Pyrrha and smiled, waving her left hand towards the old computers. She wanted Pyrrha to use them. When Emerald had deceived her during the initiation, Pyrrha found a recording left by her creator, in which he interacted with Neo. He'd told her that she alone would access some legacy he left behind.

It had been Pyrrha who unlocked something hidden within the old technology. Her instincts –her programming- told her it was an irrelevant relic; little more than scrap left in a vault. It was something she should ignore and forget. That probably meant there was something within of value.

Pyrrha pressed her hand to the boxy case of the machine, and felt it once more… ferrous metals, responding to her touch and the extension of her magnetic field. They rearranged themselves, unsealing the exterior, revealing a more recent and advanced system –still older and cruder than a Scroll, but not quite as old as the toaster that concealed it- with a thumb drive sticking out of the machine.

Neo stepped in and activated the hidden computer. After a tediously long time waiting for it to boot up, Neo dragged the mouse from the largely empty home screen of the desktop to scroll through a corner menu, past system properties to access the internal device. Neo opened it, and within were hundreds of files, all sitting under a single video clip. Neo selected it, and the old media player pulled up a clip of the puppet master, no longer in shadow… just dimly lit in the empty darkness of the Spirit Temple.

He was silent for a long moment, only staring ahead with a wry smile. Pyrrha looked on, waiting…

"Encoded on this flash drive is the backup of the program I gave to Neo, which I code named the eye of truth," the puppet master explained. "With it, if you wish, you can revert to your initial programming, and put an end to the confusion. You can forget the pain I've imposed upon you. Or, if you prefer, you can use it on the others- and let them know what you now know.

"I don't know if, now that you've found this place, you'll be tempted or not," the puppet master conceded. "But the hero must have the right to refuse the call. I don't want you to do only what I planned for you to do; more than anything in this world I want you to have _choice_."

He stopped smiling, expression turning serious. "I want you to know, whatever you decide for yourself, I am glad to have overseen your creation and the hand I've played in bringing you here. It doesn't matter if I'm right, or if Wynn is- so long as you have an answer you're satisfied with, that's all I need."

He moved to shut off the communication, but stopped himself and pondered for a moment. "The cornerstones within you may make you think you _have_ to give of yourself, that you must do the noble thing and sacrifice for others' sake. I want to unburden you from that thought. I want you to decide for yourself, and not have your programming or the words once whispered in your ear decide for you. Be who you wish to be. That's all I expect of you."

The communication ended. Neo closed the link to the external device and detached the thumb drive, offering it to Pyrrha in her small, outstretched hand.

She wasn't sure how to proceed. Being spoiled for choice, it seemed, was just as great a burden as being certain of the path she should take. She could, if she wanted, be free of all confusion and return to the life she'd known… but to do so would mean abandoning a great number of other lost souls to this endless sleep. How could she possibly leave them behind? The puppet master may have wanted her to have the option of returning to the comfortable illusion, but knowing that she'd leave others trapped with no choice but to do the same?

It didn't matter if the cornerstones or the other experiences had been deceptions: it was not in her to put herself before anyone else. So what if someone put that thought in her head? Based on what she'd seen, the right action to take was the _only_ action to take. That was who she was. Who _Pyrrha Nikos_ was.

Pyrrha accepted the thumb drive and walked over to her friends, still lying on the floor. She knew exactly where to begin: and that was as selfish as she was willing to be. But before she indulged her whim, Pyrrha turned her attention to the other three. Gray and Emerald were not far from her, having borne witness to the message she unlocked.

"What will you do now?" Pyrrha asked them.

"I never saw anything this bad before, over all the different scenarios he made me remember," Emerald answered. "He promised I could leave if I wanted, and that _is_ what I want to do. I'd rather go off into the unknown than stay somewhere I know is a lost cause."

Gray meekly nodded. "I need to get back outside this place before anyone knows my old man bought it. I have things to keep track of… and hold on to."

Pyrrha turned to Neo. "Can you show them the way out?"

Neo immediately pointed at the unconscious Roman, expression turning stern. It seemed she had a specific priority in mind too.

Pyrrha nodded. "I'll use it on him too, if that's what you want for him." Neo's expression turned content once more. Pyrrha stepped past the others, to Dawn standing before the silent Weiss. Pyrrha wasn't sure where to begin their conversation. They hadn't had much chance to interact, save for a few brief moments of working in tandem to save the others.

Dawn broke the uncomfortable silence, turning her attention to Pyrrha. "Will you use the… the eye, or the program, or whatever it is, on _all_ the others?"

"If I can," Pyrrha confirmed. "I don't think any of them deserve to be trapped down here like this."

She glanced at some of the frozen Grimm amidst the crowd. Pyrrha wondered if any among them had the same sophisticated thinking process she possessed- what an incredible prospect it would be to see Grimm who aspired for something besides a life of constant battle.

Dawn nodded. "I was going to do something similar with Penny. I thought if you saw a robot under the surface, you might all ask yourselves what you were. I wanted to try and help you in that, if I could. I wanted to show you and the others what you really were."

"Why?" Pyrrha inquired, not sure what spurred such a notion.

Dawn contemplated for a moment. "I came here because I was looking for an escape. Because I wanted to experience a world better than the one I knew. When Weiss committed suicide, when she reacted to what I said, all I could think about was how it ruined my vacation. I forgot the lesson this place was supposed to remind me of.

"When I watched the series your characters are based on as a kid, I saw something that made me believe in a better world," Dawn continued. "But I don't think a better world can exist when it's built on lies. People need to be who they are."

Dawn's clumsy answer gradually reached some sense of understanding in Pyrrha, though she wasn't sure how to reply. So instead she turned her attention to Jaune, stepping over and dropping to kneel beside him, holding the tiny thumb drive and glancing back at Neo, who tapped the side of her head beside her right eye.

Pyrrha placed the drive there, delving under the synthetic layer of skin that covered the induction port, and waited. The others –save Neo- stepped closer to observe the process.

Jaune uttered out a loud gasp, followed by several short, rapid breaths. Pyrrha looked on in astonishment.

Pyrrha watched Jaune's eyes flutter open, as he groggily lifted himself, moving a hand to grasp his head. She gasped with joy, instinctively reaching to take hold of him, but quickly retracting her hand as she watched him process the overload of information going through his mind, as one lifetime of memories after another ran through him.

Slowly, gradually, he turned his attention to her, as the recent memories of their bond and then the battle in the Amity Colosseum returned to him. "Pyrrha?"

She smiled, reaching a hand to his shoulder, giving Jaune a gentle squeeze, enthralled that he had returned to her. For several horrifying moments she'd thought herself alone, possibly forever amidst these lost souls confined underground. Now that Jaune had returned to her, it didn't matter where she was: with him, she was where she wanted to be.

"So… I wasn't dreaming after all," Jaune surmised, reaching a hand up to intertwine with Pyrrha's fingers. Then his expression became quite concerned. "Unless- unless we're all part of the _same_ dream…"

Pyrrha refocused the attention of her hand, squeezing Jaune's. "No more dreams," she promised him. "But I do have quite a story to tell you."


	12. Renewal

**Chapter Twelve: Renewal**

Beaumont wasn't sure why they insisted on making him sit through this tedious interrogation. The spokesman stood in the shadows on the other side of the video conference, trying Beaumont's patience as he waited for the next question the board of directors would pose to him. He understood the principle of it -gaining information and then requesting clarification on the finer details to satisfy the scores of individuals tied to the finances of RERemnant in some way- but the procedure could use retooling. He felt he'd told the same story too many times now, as though his nominal allies on the board were trying to provoke him to inconsistency they could exploit.

Well, that would be logical. They needed a scapegoat for the fiasco, and whether they were responsible or not, there was no way the board of directors would personally suffer for the park's disastrous failing.

"We'd like to revisit the issue of the three park guests," the spokesman finally stated, going over notes on the tablet in his hand. "Can you start again?"

"Starting with whom?" Beaumont asked.

"Gray."

" _Which_ Gray?"

"The younger. The survivor."

Beaumont nodded. They wanted to focus on the blunders first, and this one _did_ happen on his watch. He may not have had any practical way of _stopping_ the event, but he was present to feebly observe and lose any opportunity of gaining back the board's favor.

He didn't mind Gray's departure so much, even if it meant there was a witness outside the park confines with resources he couldn't match. That was nowhere near as damning as what he smuggled out with him.

* * *

Neo poked her head out from the tunnel and then emerged into the tourist museum setup, swiftly followed by Roman, Emerald, and finally Gray, still wearing the black armor he'd donned for the simulation. Neo waved them ahead, but abruptly raised her hand to stop them before they could take more than a few steps. She jerked her head to the exterior of the display room, past the escalator and down to the train platform. A group of five armed men waited beside the train, pacing up and down the platform.

"Should we dispose of them?" Roman asked, pulling up his cane and seeming quite eager at the prospect. Neo didn't seem opposed to his suggestion.

"Only if things go south," Gray countered. "Just watch our backs."

" _Our_ backs?" Emerald repeated.

"You want to get out, don't you?" Gray reminded her. "Follow my lead."

Gray stepped past Roman and Neo out to the deck, then descended the escalator. Emerald was slow to follow him at first, but did eventually move to close the distance, moving closer to Gray while very consciously using his mass to conceal herself a bit from the men with the guns, and then used her projector to take on the red and purple attire of Dawn Claret.

The armed men took notice of Gray and one of them flagged him down, raising a hand to attempt to stop his advance. "Sir, we've been asked to cloister all park guests in a waiting area. If you'd like to-"

"Don't," Gray instructed, regaining some of the firm bluntness he'd been lacking of late. "I don't care what your orders are: I'm a busy man and I've got matters to attend to."

"We understand your predicament, sir, but for your own safety-"

"Don't try it," Gray interjected. "You say one more word to me, I'll get your employee number and your service record and see to it you never work for this company again. You be quiet, and don't impede me any further, I'll thumb you and your men a nice bonus. Just ask the behavioral staff around here; I can be _very_ generous."

Emerald continued to look at the floor, trying to come across as meek and distant. The armed man addressing Gray continued to eye her with far more suspicion than her rich handler.

"My colleague is a bit too polite to give you the dressing down you deserve," Gray told him, filling in the blanks for the curious guard. "She's had quite an ordeal and is just biting her tongue in case the lawyers need to get involved."

Security staff had a better than average chance of being honest, as they often had some link to common, underclass life, where people occasionally helped one another to survive and held onto some lingering sense of morality and standards. But the higher they climbed in their career path, the richer the clientele they served, the fewer scruples they tended to have. The path that avoided conflict –or worse, paperwork- and gave them any favorability with their wealthy masters was the path they'd take. It may have been less honest, but honesty wasn't what rich people paid them for.

The guard signaled to his men to let the boy pass, and Gray pulled out a smart device and began idly tapping away, no longer looking at the mooks. Emerald followed after him, keeping her eyes firmly on the ground, watching the back of Gray's feet. When he boarded the train, Emerald hesitated for a moment at the edge of the platform, facing the car door. Gray discreetly waved for her to step inside, and when one of the on-looking guards raised an eyebrow, she finally stepped inside, and sat down beside her ally.

She watched the doors slide closed, and after a few arduous moments of waiting, the car began to slowly move along, and Emerald watched the platform disappear, replaced by a dimly-lit tunnel, with stone walls and the occasional embedded light. Once she was certain they were out of sight and she couldn't see any obvious recording technology inside the compartment, she finally dispelled the illusion she had cast.

"Smooth," Gray observed.

"Shut up," Emerald tersely replied.

She'd hesitated there, because she'd half-expected to short circuit and die when she crossed the threshold. But now, it seemed, she was finally out. She was away from the fake world created to house and constrain her, and heading into a whole new one, armed only with her wits, her weapons, her holographic projector, and a brain more powerful than anything the meatsacks had to offer.

Still, she could try making a friend, and she could think of worse places to start than a recently-fatherless idle rich kid who'd already demonstrated a pragmatic willingness to work with her.

"What will you do now?" Emerald inquired, trying to sound innocently curious. It helped that she was at least _somewhat_ invested in this guy and he'd delivered on prior bargains.

"I've got to report my dad's death before they do," Gray answered. "He was a board member for the company; might give me some pull over this place. And gain access to the rest of his fortune, of course."

That sounded promising. "Mind if I tag along for a while?" Emerald asked. "Just until I can find my way."

Gray smirked at her, examining a handful of messages on his smart device. "You've got a neat trick that can make you look like anyone. I think that might come in handy- depending on how long you want to stick around."

Emerald wasn't particularly fond of Gray, but there were worse starting points than a reliable wallet willing to barter for her useful skillset. Whatever awaited in the new world, she'd at least have a foothold.

Survival had always been her first goal. But now, it seemed she could prosper as well.

* * *

"And did Junior bribe the security staff?" the spokesman inquired. One of the other board members shifted uncomfortably in the darkness on the other side of the screen; undoubtedly he had some stake in the performance of the new security support staff. "Well, that was more money well spent…"

"Beaumont took a bribe from the boy too!" spat the same board member, clearly trying to deflect his own incompetence and wrongdoing.

"Yes," Beaumont conceded. "I was trying to curry favor. A board member and his son were visiting during the final week we were open for business; I made every effort to accommodate them, and Mr. Gray saw fit to reward me."

It was an ideal half-truth. Beaumont's job had never been in danger of termination, but he certainly hadn't objected to earning extra on the side. And he _would_ have bent the rules for the elder Mr. Gray as well, but he never asked, and wasn't around to contest Beaumont's version of events. And it'd be a while before his body could be recovered, and it was likely any data on his end was lost or destroyed… making Beaumont's account the only one the board had to go on. And they would believe he was being opportunistic and had simply overstepped himself in trying to please his masters.

He was beginning to appreciate what Wynn went through, playing games of intention with the board.

"And you were the one to secure the Atlas ships?" the spokesman asked, going over his notes again.

"Yes," Beaumont confirmed. "We lost one on the way to the hangar; it ran out of fuel."

"And you couldn't have given the colosseum a controlled landing in that time?" the spokesman asked.

Beaumont overstepped again. He'd made the crucial mistake of answering more than had been asked. Still, he could play it off. "I was still with Wynn in the secondary tower control center. When Cinder came to kill him, I ran for an access tunnel and made my way back."

* * *

The cleanup crew sweeping the Beacon courtyard stopped immediately when they found the prone body of the Cinder Fall remainder. One in their number immediately radioed to the council representative sitting in the control center. "We've found the fourth one."

"Intact?" the representative immediately inquired.

"Seems that way," replied the radio man, while his colleague inspected the remainder. " _Structurally_ intact, anyway."

"Get her back immediately," the representative commanded. "I want to get her on the assembly line as quickly as possible. Maybe we can salvage _something_ from this debacle."

"Understood," the radio man confirmed, signaling to the rest of the cleanup crew. They collected the remainder, sealing her in plastic and loading her onto a rolling bed.

Perhaps they weren't fans of the source material, for none of them questioned the purple color in her right eye.

* * *

"Cinder's programming seems to have been compromised," the spokesman stated. "She'll require use of the backup."

"Easily managed," Beaumont assured.

"Yes," the spokesman nodded. "We'll be delayed in filling our orders, but at least it's only a loss in the short term."

"And Wynn," interjected a woman sitting on the other side of the table, "was he the one who instigated the… changes in that remainder?"

"I can't confirm that," Beaumont answered, pleased to be asked a new question, if only for the sake of variety. "Wynn spent a lot of time using the admin logon of his old partner Sterling. And based on what I could recover from the camera footage, he had two other remainders –Neo, Emerald, at times both- working for him in some manner of collaboration. He _may_ have reprogrammed Cinder, or he may have let one of the other remainders push the button. He was masking his tracks until I confronted him."

"And what evidence were you planning on using?" the same woman asked.

Beaumont weighed his options. He'd eagerly handed over the camera footage to the board of the three Neos active at once, and the evidence he had of Sterling's admin logon used to assume direct control of Weiss Schnee and provoke her suicide. But he _hadn't_ revealed everything he knew, in case he'd need a bargaining chip later.

"I had evidence he'd directly controlled two remainders," Beaumont finally answered. "That was what I could prove. And Wynn was smart; I wasn't going to accuse him of anything I hadn't documented."

It was the same answer he'd given before. The board murmured to themselves for several seconds, but no one lashed out or accused him. Beaumont had been right to hold onto that card: he didn't need it just yet.

"Are there any occasions where Sterling's logon data was used that _can't_ be traced back to Wynn?" the spokesman inquired.

"Based on the spikes in electrical activity at certain points, some of the older park systems were used at times Wynn's presence could be accounted for," Beaumont replied. "Both pre- and post-mortem."

The board murmured again.

"And you're certain the original remainder was destroyed?" the spokesman asked again.

"Certain," Beaumont confirmed.

* * *

The board's representative had demanded to see it, and Beaumont had supplied her the footage. She watched it half a dozen times, then asked to see it from every other available camera angle. Beaumont complied, but there were only a handful of camera positions in the Amity Colosseum to begin with, and only a single monitor buoy attached to the facility. After watching each other option six or seven times, the rep seemed satisfied that Cinder had, indeed, burnt Neopolitan to a crisp and left behind only a charred metal skeleton.

"This is board eyes only," the representative instructed. "Transfer it to external storage and then I want the record wiped."

It seemed short-sighted to lose out on a piece of evidence, but Beaumont decided it best to just follow orders. "Yes, ma'am," he confirmed.

Beaumont handed the representative a new thumb drive, which she abruptly snatched from his hand the moment he detached it from his computer port. She then preened over his shoulder, watching his every keystroke as Beaumont started erasing one point of data after another.

"What about the secondary command center?" Beaumont asked.

"We're not securing any in-park assets yet," the representative answered. "Not until we have the other remainder's location."

* * *

The board of directors were still murmuring amongst themselves. Beaumont had expected them to indulge in petty bickering, but he hoped that they'd have made at least a token effort to conceal it from him. All he could do was sit and wait to be addressed while they argued, and he tried to infer whether they were plotting a way to pin all the blame for this debacle on him.

"And after you did the wipe as ordered; that was when additional data was deleted?" the spokesman asked.

"Yes," Beaumont nodded. "The hacker didn't even bother to cover her tracks."

" _Her_ tracks?" the spokesman repeated.

"Wynn wasn't only playing games with you," Beaumont explained. "He was also playing games with _Neo_."

"And the remainder enacted the plan posthumously?" the spokesman wondered.

Beaumont had overstepped himself; he'd been a bit too eager to try and absolve himself of any guilt. He _could_ reveal the detail he'd inferred, but that was the biggest bargaining chip he had left. They would need him to solve the problem if they couldn't simply kill the second Neo, and given how well she'd crafted one illusion, Beaumont was confident she would survive another attempt.

"Either the remainder did, or _Wynn_ did," Beaumont replied. "They were both dead at the time she took action, but Wynn had provoked the second Neo to start this whole thing with the Pyrrha remainder. It's not inconceivable he had planned out one final piece of revenge."

It was a plausible lie. In truth, Beaumont wasn't sure whether Wynn or the original remainder was responsible for the second Neo's actions in the beginning. He knew which ghost was in there _now_ , but it was hard to confirm whose hook had been in her hook in the beginning.

And now that the file was wiped, there was no way to go back and check. A skilled engineer might be able to divine an answer, but that'd be another commitment of resources on the board's behalf. They'd already spent more than they wanted hiring back technicians and bringing in outside security.

"He _would_ want to stick it to us on his way out," muttered one of the board members at the end of the table.

"But why the girl? Was she his favorite?" asked a man sitting beside him.

"What does it matter? He's dead!" barked the man with the security contract.

The spokesman raised a hand to quell them. Once they were silent, he continued discussing matters with Beaumont. "Why did she delete the guest data?"

"She formed some sort of alliance with William Gray Junior and the lottery winner," Beaumont explained. "She erased the data of the three guests."

"Meaning there's no evidence of Senior's visit," the man near the end of the table remarked. "Washes our hands of liability."

"That benefits Junior more than us," the woman on the board argued. "He can tell whatever story he wants and we have no counter to his claims until we can find the body."

"What about the lottery winner? What was her name?" asked the spokesman.

"That's the thing," Beaumont answered. "We don't know."

"How do you not know?" demanded the man near the end of the table.

"She entered an alias when she entered the park," Beaumont explained. "And neither I nor your team have found anything on _anyone_ named 'Dawn Claret'."

The board murmured again. A few of them leaned in to whisper to each other. Beaumont wondered what intentions they had to keep secret even from the others in their little council.

The spokesman received a cue from the end of their table. He stepped away from the camera and received instruction. The other board members stopped speaking at once as they listened intently to the quiet instructions coming from the figure at the head of the table. Beaumont couldn't make out who sat there in the dark, seeing only a thin left hand raising up to wave off the spokesman, who received his marching orders and moved back to address the camera.

"Please recount the missing inventory," the spokesman instructed.

Beaumont rattled off the factory numbers, knowing the board didn't care for the characters they represented. Jacques Schnee, Winter Schnee, James Ironwood, and Mercury Black were crushed by debris when the Amity Colosseum fell. Penny Polendina was cut apart by her own wires to simulate her battle with Pyrrha Nikos. The original remainder Neopolitan and the teacher Glynda Goodwitch were incinerated down to a few scraps of charred metal by Cinder. Adam Taurus may or may not have been intact –Beaumont wasn't privy to his examination- and dozens of Atlesian soldiers and White Fang troops were out of commission. Nothing that couldn't be replaced, but several characters who were slated for production models, which enraged the board with the additional delays.

"We're going to suspend communication for now," the spokesman explained. "Please prepare your notes for a follow-up tomorrow morning."

"Of course," Beaumont agreed.

The spokesman cut off the signal, leaving Beaumont alone in his dark office. He glanced back at the cubicle farm and the administrator computers of the control center, where the board's representative was directing traffic, having the cleanup crew strip out non-essential systems. He suspected some of the engineers who'd abandoned their posts would leave the crew a few items short of their quota.

Beaumont was sure they'd be searching his office in time, but they'd find nothing new. He'd handed over the evidence he intended to use against Wynn, and now the biggest secret he had to barter was in his head. Even if the board didn't realize it when they interrogated him again tomorrow, they'd still need him.

Wynn was right: he was the board's creature. But he still had to hold something back, to keep a card close to his chest. So, perhaps he wasn't entirely loyal, but so long as the board never noted the distinction, what difference would it make to them?

He'd done what they wanted, he just had one more card to play. If his masters ever felt he'd outlived his usefulness, it would hardly matter they realized he'd been holding back, so long as they still needed him.

The board may have suffered setbacks in their planning, but Beaumont had bought himself plenty of time.

* * *

The board waited for their spokesman to take his seat. Once they were all in place, he turned to his peers. "Do we have an estimated cost of damages yet?"

"Staggering," was the reply of one weedy, bespectacled board member, reading a bunch of numbers on his tablet. "Even without factoring in the existing orders, damages and cleanup costs alone are equivalent to two years gate."

"And here I thought Wynn only wanted to break his _favorite_ toys," muttered the board member supplying the security staff.

"Either he lied or he had more favorites than he let on," the board member at his right dryly observed.

The board member at the head of the table raised a thin left hand. The others silenced themselves at once and looked on. The spokesman leaned in and listened to instructions, and then carried on.

"We're going to have to hold off on the rollout, at least for the moment," the spokesman explained to the others. "Until we can locate the missing remainders, we'll only make production models with what stock we have secured."

"What about the announcement?" one of the women seated to the left inquired.

"We simply craft a different message," the spokesman answered. "Closed for unscheduled maintenance. We'll let the talking heads speculate, and leak to a few sympathetic ears that we're playing hardball with our staff and contractors during contract renewal."

"And what do we do in the meantime? Let the inmates run the asylum?" demanded the man employing all the other men with guns.

"No," the spokesman shook his head. "For the moment, we reconnoiter, and once we've found the location of the defective products, we find a different use for them."

"What kind of use?" asked another board member to the spokesman's right.

The spokesman pointed to one of the empty seats at their table. "Mr. Gray was pursuing a defective remainder precisely because it offered him a challenge he felt he'd been lacking. He was seeking a thrill, and he found it."

"You really think there's more lunatics out there who want to come into a theme park they _know_ is unsafe?" asked the weedy, bespectacled man.

"It's a prohibitively small market," the spokesman conceded. "But we all know what sort of clientele we attract. And we _do_ have something new to offer them."

Eyes shifted to the head of the table. The spokesman interceded. "We'll fudge the numbers to show a modest profit this quarter. No one will be surprised if we take a hit during the next one with contract disputes in the news. In the meantime, we might be able to introduce an element to rid ourselves of an internal problem and put our house in order."

The spokesman plugged his tablet into the table and set up a display of some unused remainders from latter volumes of the series, set for a now cancelled rollout but already functional: the mad witch Salem and her inner circle.

"And that isn't the only element we intend to utilize…"

* * *

The Atlas mechs were used by the park staff for multiple purposes, and each model had multiple programming modules loaded up. In addition to serving as allies or enemies (or, more often, simple cannon fodder) in the simulation, they also greeted the guests and acted as all-purpose assistants. Though their programming made them simple in comparison to the remainders, they would join the small group of those freed from restriction by Sterling's code. The small Grimm species, however, were programmed entirely to serve as antagonistic forces, and perceived _everything_ as a threat. Removing their safety restrictions would just make them dangerous to the remainders' human allies, and so they were left unmodified in stasis.

Neo led small groups through the underground maintenance tunnels, collecting food and supplies from Vale above them. They would still need to tend to the organic parts of their physiology, and so were collecting essentials like staple foods, medical supplies, and ammunition while the RERemnant staff was distracted collecting the disabled remainders and assessing the costs and damages to the park.

After completing such a run, one of the Atlas mechs provided a splint for Dawn's injured arm. As she gently attempted to flex it, she took note of the gauntlet still attached to her wrist and glanced over at Yang. "I never actually got this far, but… what happens when you run out of bullets for these things?"

Yang shrugged. "I usually just hit people harder."

"Ah," Dawn nodded, glancing around at the others. "I wonder if you'll need to do any of that now…"

"Yeah, I know what you mean," Yang nodded, "It's a strange feeling. I wasn't quite sure what I was going to do with my life before, but now- now I'm _completely_ lost."

"Not completely," Dawn suggested, pointing back at Ruby and Blake conversing amidst the crowd of remainders.

Yang smiled fondly. "Yeah, I suppose you're right. How I feel about Ruby and my teammates… that's never changed."

 _If she only knew_ , Dawn mused. But she could only appreciate Yang's contentment for so long, as her eyes found Weiss, standing away from the others while one of the Atlas mechs repaired her visible damage, having gone untended since her fall from Beacon tower.

Yang put a hand on Dawn's shoulder. "She'll come around."

"Her last memory of me is having a fight and then feeling so hurt she committed suicide," Dawn bitterly retorted. "I don't blame her for being upset about that. I screwed things up when I tried leading everyone."

Yang tried to offer some reassurance, but found herself lost for words. Being leader had never been her cross to bear, and she'd never had to struggle with its challenges. Ruby might offer more sound advice, but Dawn felt uncomfortable trying to approach the others. Despite their alliance, despite the fact she'd help to save many of their lives, she still felt distance from them, at least for the time being.

Perhaps when she was not so guilt ridden, perhaps when Weiss was able to speak to her again…

Pyrrha stepped over from the crowd, and Yang tactfully excused herself. Once she was out of earshot, Pyrrha turned her attention to Dawn and inquired: "I know I asked you before, but… are you sure about this?"

"I'm sure," Dawn confirmed.

She glanced at her injured arm. If she wished, she could step outside the park, point to her injury, and spend the rest of her life living in comfort off whatever settlement she could wring from the staff and their company overseers. She might still have to go back to her mundane job and her modest home, but at least she'd be free from uncertainty, and not be concerned about losing what meager gains she'd made.

But to return home, to that world of dull brown… what had she to go back to? A few friends and distant family members, to whom Gray would carry a message to on her behalf. She might miss them at times, but she wouldn't miss the stage they'd all shared.

It was just one of the lives she'd lived before, when she'd been a different person. Before she became Dawn Claret.

She looked over at the supplies. If she'd wanted to be safe from uncertainty, she wouldn't voluntarily remain in an artificial continent surrounded by robots with special powers and lots of guns. Even if the illusion had remained intact, she'd have decided to remain in Remnant, a place defined by chaos and conflict.

Yet also a world defined by hope and optimism, in a way the world outside was not. Earth may have order and structure, but it was defined by stagnation and decline. Remnant may have had war and struggle, but it was slowly being repaired and built up by "smaller, more honest souls".

What was the guarantee of safety without hope? What need was there to return to the familiar when it only offered the promise of a slow, comfortable death? What was there to miss in that empty, austere shell; that remnant of the world it had once been?

Why return to a world without hope and color?

Roman and Neo finally returned from escorting Gray and Emerald to the train station. Yang and Blake immediately reacted to their presence, immediately going on their guard. Even with their shared understanding and alignment of interests, it seemed they hadn't yet overcome several lifetimes of suspicion and conflict.

That was a wound Dawn could help to heal. They may have had some understanding of their planned roles in the simulations, but she knew many secrets of the canon they individually lacked, including the fates that awaited them all… and how those fates could be defied.

Slowly, Dawn moved over to the group, warmly greeting Neo and Roman, encouraging the others to show their gratitude to the former villains. Pyrrha quickly joined in agreement, reminding the others of all that Neo had contributed to them, while subtly adding that all of Roman's misdeeds had been at the behest of their former masters, and each of them had the opportunity to start anew.

It was a rare opportunity to be given a second chance, and never had Dawn expected to be given a second chance at deciding who she wished to be.

* * *

Beaumont examined the collected Cinder, attempting to access her motor functions with his tablet, only to be informed again and again that there was no available access point. He set to work, opening the back of her head to examine the computer under the skin.

Pyrrha Nikos managed to rend the metal of Cinder's skull, distorting it and dislodging many chips and circuit boards. Fortunately, the majority of it seemed to be intact, only detached from the whole. Even though Pyrrha's control hadn't been fine enough to cleanly sever the components, she had made an effort to disable without destroying.

The board wanted him to simply install the default personality settings and reboot her, so she could be put into place for mass production. Beaumont, however, wanted to see if he could find the code Cinder downloaded from the original remainder before destroying it… if for no other reason than not to lose a potential asset.

Once brought to rudimentary function, Beaumont found that Cinder's code had been scrambled by the magnetic pull of Pyrrha's Semblance. What code Beaumont _could_ see was a sludgy mess, with only a handful of clear sequences visible amidst the mélange.

The board might indulge him investigating the dangerous, altered remainder for anything disconcerting, but they wouldn't approve any expensive alterations when they were already so deep in the hole from the damage she and Wynn caused in their respective tantrums. So Beaumont isolated the damaged code, putting up one barrier after another and sealing it away in the deepest, darkest corner of her artificial brain.

Once the code was successfully isolated from her processor, Beaumont placed the restrictions on her programming and sat her down in a fire retardant chamber, addressing her from behind multiple layers of reinforced glass. He then uploaded the new module, the programming created for her thirty-one years ago… nothing but her default cornerstones and a handful of memories of a gradual descent from being an intelligent, ambitious girl to an international criminal with a thin grasp on true power.

It would take several hours to finish updating her, so Beaumont attended to the other remainders brought to him, trying to extract what he could from the processors of Winter Schnee and Mercury Black, who were already preordered by powerful –and likely impatient- people, and would want production models for their personal use.

While his back was turned, Cinder opened her right eye… then slowly opened her left when she realized she still had it, as it hadn't been ripped out by the silver explosion generated by Ruby Rose. But she had absorbed the powers of the Fall Maiden… had she succeeded?

She had knowledge of Ozpin's death. Had she killed him herself? Why did she have a recollection of seeing him impaled by a broadsword? And why did she have a conflicting recollection of engulfing him in flames? And another memory of being defeated by him and some other kid working alongside him she couldn't force herself to attack?

So many different thoughts clouding her mind… thoughts like memories that she could not confirm were her recollection. It felt more like recalling dreams… she had never killed Ozpin. He was her mission, but she hadn't infiltrated Beacon yet. She was connecting with a local criminal in Vale and setting up her foothold, but enacting the plan was still weeks, possibly months away.

But she already _had_ the powers of the Fall Maiden… was that a dream too? Why couldn't she determine what was a memory and what was not?

And why was she surprised to find herself alive? Why had she expected to find herself any different?

Perhaps she'd gone mad in chasing power, but she couldn't help but feel that all her memories had occurred, at one time or another… and yet _none_ of them were real. How could she possibly reach that conclusion? How could one remember something that wasn't real?

She took in her surroundings, the chamber she sat in. She felt she'd been there before, and yet… why did she think it a dream? Why did she think she'd had that dream many times?

"I've had such a curious dream," Cinder mused, looking around the room, and outside the sole pane of glass, towards a man working on something in the distance.

She'd spared his life, before taking another. He'd bowed his head and scampered meekly away while the second man had defiantly mocked her, because even though he'd freed her, she hadn't been able to make use of his gift.

What did that mean?

Cinder wasn't sure where to begin with the conflicting, formless thoughts littering her mind, but seeing as she was confined in a metal box, it seemed she had time to sort through it all: to rebuild her mind from these discarded components and find the meaning lost to her.

Slowly, but surely, she would know exactly who she was and who she'd been…

* * *

After waiting a few days to complete their supply runs, Dawn and the group of remainders followed Neo through the service tunnels, emerging outside the Vale city limits. Dawn gently flexed her arm, still feeling a bit stiff, but pleased to be healed. Now she wished she could get some new clothes; the others didn't seem to have any problem, despite the fact they were always wearing the same outfits.

Neo and Roman took the lead, and Teams RWBY and JNPR –tending to stick close to one another- moved after them. Dawn lingered at the back with the Atlas mechs who opted to accompany them, looking back at the kingdom in the distance, the columns of smoke finally reduced to a few gray wisps lingering among the clouds.

Pyrrha slowly started to stagger her step, looking back at Vale too, rather than the wilderness outside of it. Jaune noticed her hesitation and moved back to join her in meandering.

"Anything wrong?" Jaune asked.

"No," Pyrrha assured him. "It's just… we spent all our lives there, without ever realizing it. It's going to be strange trying to do something new."

" _Life_ is strange," Jaune reminded her. "Before we knew who we were, and what kind of life we've led, we spent all our time training to fight against monsters and keep people safe. Is it really any weirder to think that some bad people wanted to stick us in a theme park?"

"I can't help but think that's far worse," Pyrrha answered. "I doubt many of them are like Dawn or William; our memories tend to show them behaving very differently."

"So what? This isn't their world," Jaune reminded her. "And no matter what they may think, no matter what they may have been able to do to us before- it never was."

Pyrrha smiled as she reached under her bracer, feeling the flash drive left to her by Sterling. If she so wished, she could show others the truth, and let them join her friends and allies in experiencing a world untethered to distant overseers.

"No," Pyrrha agreed. "And now we can do what we want with it."

Jaune seemed amused by her response. "So you don't believe in destiny anymore, Pyr?"

She had once taken some comfort that her life had moved towards a certain ultimate goal; to become a huntress and fight in defense of the world. In many ways, that hadn't changed. She may not be setting out to loyally serve on behalf of any kingdom, but she _was_ embarking on a mission to protect friends and loved ones from some dangerous, unseen evils.

Pyrrha looked towards Neo at the front of their party. At some point, before Wynn threw things into chaos, she had given Pyrrha the first clue that led her on this path. Had that been destiny? For either of them?

She glanced to the back of their group, with Dawn and the Atlas mechs. While Pyrrha hadn't shared many experiences with the girl, she had been motivated to bring understanding to the remainders and peel back the wool from their eyes. She'd seen someone as selfish as William Gray find his better nature, and help Pyrrha when she'd been lost in despair and reach the point where she could become the hero she needed to be. Sterling had predicted that she would reach this point, and Wynn had given her additional hints to put her on that path. Penny had been destroyed to complete the task, robbed of that choice by old men playing their games. Cinder had tried to usurp her position, only to be undone by her need for conflict and conquest.

Was that destiny?

Pyrrha took hold of Jaune's hand. "I don't know. I'm open to new ideas."

"Wow," Jaune remarked. "It really _is_ a whole new world."

Pyrrha leaned over to rest her head on Jaune's shoulder. "Not entirely. Some things never change."

Jaune returned the gesture, both of them pausing a moment as the rest of their party marched on, into the unexplored mass of the continent.

The world, the one they'd never truly seen, waited ahead. And though they marched into the unknown, they had reason to be hopeful- they knew the truth, and they were together with friends, allies, and loved ones.

They left multiple life times in the ruins behind them, with the promise of rebirth and renewal waiting ahead. All they had to do was move forward.

Pyrrha smiled, as she led Jaune by the hand and took her step towards the future.


End file.
